José Henrique Neto
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09-03-07
HUMAN SEXUALITY
- AN ETHICAL REFLECTION -
28/CNECV/99
99.11.09
English version: José H. Neto
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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Continuing its activity of ethical appraisement of problems relevant to our
society, the National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences decided to initiate an indepth reflection on human sexuality, wherefore it invited Prof. Michel Renaud to
elaborate a working document. The latter was assessed in the course of several
plenary meetings. Taking into account comments and contributions that arose
therein, Prof. Michel Renaud gave his text the form presented below, which the
Council sees fit to publish, for it is an opportune contribution to a debate on this
theme.
National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences,
Lisbon, the 9th of November, 1999
Prof. Luís Archer
President of the National Council of Ethics
for the Life Sciences
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HUMAN SEXUALITY – AN ETHICAL REFLECTION
Introduction
Sexuality appears to human beings as a mysterious reality, springing since
time immemorial from mythical ground. Among the multiplicity of dimensions inherent
in sexuality, three appear to be particularly relevant, providing thus a starting point for
a general reflection on the subject: the cosmic-vital force, the sacred aspect, and
human presence. The mythical grounding of human sexuality maintained a strong
interconnection between these dimensions; in our contemporary culture, by and
large, they are seen in dissociation.
As a cosmic-vital phenomenon, sexuality is connected with the generation of
new living beings. It is an instinctive force, thanks to which the perishable life of
animal organisms perpetuates itself and evolves; resulting, over millennia, in both the
permanence and the evolution of animal species. For human beings, sexual
reproduction both animal and human carries an almost mythical and sacred
connotation, by dint of its proximity to the mystery of the origin of all living things. But
human sexuality specifically, inasmuch as it is not identified purely and simply with
reproduction, introduces new parameters of experience and understanding, which
interfere with the spontaneous cycle of generations.
The connectedness of those three dimensions in human experience
characterises sexuality in primitive societies. In result of this interconnection, human
sexuality is imbued with a cosmic dimension, making men and women parties to the
reproductive and creative force of the world of life. This life is then perceived by the
imagination as part and parcel of the “life” of the cosmos itself, benefiting thereby
from the sacred aura that affects the cosmic totality. The birth of a new child evokes
and reenacts the fascinating mystery of life. Thus, the three primordial dimensions
that lend some intelligibility to sexuality appear to be present in all primitive societies.
They are: the vital force that embraces the human species to the bosom of all living
species, without particular privilege; the sacred mystery of this force, which has a
cosmic dimension inasmuch as it is bound with the origin of the world; and lastly, the
specific face taken on by human sexuality upon its institutionalisation by social and
moral rules.
This solid interconnection no longer exists in contemporary societies deemed
to be developed. Scientific knowledge of the mechanisms of reproduction contributes
to the forced retreat of the sacred and mysterious dimension of human sexuality.
Likewise, the spontaneous linking of human sexuality with the cosmic character of
the vital force gradually loses its hold. As for the third of these dimensions, a latent
conflict subsists between the effort to discipline human sexuality by its incorporation
into the institution (the different forms of matrimony), and the rebellious character of a
sexuality that seeks total freedom for the ways it is expressed. Nonetheless, we may
consider that even in developed societies the dimensions pointed out still manifest
their presence, however intermittent, residual or subconscious.
In the wake of these considerations, it is important to stress the impact of
partial connections. When human sexuality is apprehended against the background
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of the cosmic-vital force, its facet of anonymous life experience becomes more
marked; the human presence is diluted in the vitality of this force, to such an extent
that, upon awakening to the mystery of life, the adult human being feels
overwhelmed by an anonymous, faceless and almost violent power. We are not far
removed from Bacchanalia and the Dionysian undercurrent that illustrates the
“nocturnal” side of life experience, that is to say, its pre-personal side. In the sex
orgies of ancient Greece, or of our own time, human individualisation is erased, as if
the essential goal were to let oneself be absorbed by or pervaded with the torrent of
the sexual force. As it passes, it sweeps away everything in the human being that
might recall the personalisation of the face. In the Bacchanalia of ancient times, the
use of masks causes the face to disappear behind the body, from which emanates
only erotic force or seductive power. But there is a heavy price to pay: so long as it is
not oriented towards the person but to objective sex, as it were, human behaviour
appears as sub-ethical, or more accurately, as guided solely by the value of “animal
life.” Inversely, upon the emergence of an ethics of sexuality of a personal nature, the
anonymous, “archaic sacred” dimension that underlay Dionysian orgies fell apart.
This Dionysian dimension is still present nevertheless in other cultures and religions
–in Hinduism, for instance – with a proliferation of the cosmic-vital symbolism, laden
with hierogamies and acts of war and love.
According to Paul Ricoeur,1 this historic transformation was brought on by the
joint cultural impact of ethical monotheism 2 and technical reason. The violence of
Eros must give way to order and discipline. Sexuality must accept not only the mould
of the family Institution but also the consequences thereof concerning respect for the
person, with sexual relations taking place under the marriage “contract.” Thus, the
aim of the institutionalisation of sexuality is to transform the old cosmic-vital force into
a personal and personalised encounter of bodies without a mask, as if the nakedness
of the bodies were an extension of the transparency of the faces.
The force of the sex drive is not so easily tamed, however. A kind of struggle
sets in between disciplined sexuality and the vigour of this driving force, which resists
the reins of order and makes constant show of its overwhelming, quasi-chaotic
energy. Moreover, it so happens in the human species that procreative ability or
genital sexuality precedes psychological maturity; likewise, in Western societies,
psychological maturity often precedes the social and economic ability to found a new
family cell.
The difficulty of finding equilibrium in our sex life arises from this interaction of
the driving force, the conscious meaning of an interpersonal relation, and the role of
the institution. First of all, this drive operates involuntarily and it is not conscious at
the origin. Were it fully unconscious yet readily isolated, like an internal body organ,
our sex drive would escape the universe of meaning each of us consciously
experiences; but in human beings that drive is never experienced in isolation from
the sphere of meaning. In other words, Man does not and cannot experience
sexuality in an exclusively animal way: representation and imagination intervene
between drive and meaning. Reciprocally, representation in sexual experience is
1
2
Paul RICOEUR, “La sexualité. Merveille, errance, énigme,” in Histoire et vérité. Paris, Seuil, 1964
(3rd ed.), pp. 198-209.
What is meant here by “monotheism” is not primarily the philosophical theory according to which
there is but one God; it is rather the historical emergence of monotheism with the rise of the three
religions of “the Book” – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. What is meant by ethical monotheism is
the effect of this historical monotheism upon the ethical understanding of the individual.
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never purely intellectual, for it is infused with the driving force. “Ni ange, ni bête”
[neither angel nor beast], Pascal used to say of Man – and a French saying added,
“qui fait l’ange fait la bête” [playing the angel makes you beastly (i.e. a proper
jackass)]. The mystery of human sexuality lies in this knotting of unconscious drive
with conscious meaning, in this crossing of two lines seeking, not quite successfully,
to head their own way. That is why the several bodies of knowledge on sexuality are
divided today into at least two mainstreams: on the one hand, the line of depth
psychology (psychoanalysis); on the other, the philosophical and ethical description
of the meaning of sexuality. One thing can be gleaned from these initial
considerations, that neither of these two lines of investigation will be able to absorb
the other completely: psychoanalytical theory is unable to substitute a philosophy of
sexuality, but the latter, in turn, fails to integrate exhaustively and rationally the
sexual driving force.
Paraphrasing a title by Ricoeur (1964), we might say that sexuality is at one
and the same time wonder, wandering and conundrum. It is wonder as a discovery of
the life that infuses us, impelling each of us to others; it is wandering or straying
when it is experienced in anonymity disregarding the other’s face, as an unbridled
pursuit of pleasure or as objectification and instrumentalisation of other bodies;
finally, it is a conundrum because the equilibrium it seeks would entail – and this
brings to mind trying to square a circle – a proper and definitive reconciliation of the
unconscious and the conscious, of the unconscious vital force and the conscious
commitment to meaning sprung from an ethical life.
The central theme of the present analysis is sexuality; primarily, it is not love.
That is why the starting point adopted herein will not be the loving relationship
between human beings; in effect, it is important to focus on sexuality to discern how
love arises within it. A description of love would follow a different track, showing the
incorporation of sexuality into the loving encounter.
An analysis of sexuality, however brief, raises the question of defining the
points of view adopted and the initial meaning of the concepts. Since this analysis is
oriented to the search for the ethical principles relating to sexuality, it will be centred
on those aspects that are indispensable to such a search. Starting from a cursory
glance at some sociological data to which the reader is referred (no. 1), the analysis
will turn at length on a philosophical description of sexuality (no. 2), for ethical
principles (no. 3) must be rooted on a theoretical and not purely pragmatic
understanding of human existence. Finally, it will be opportune to highlight some
consequences that apply to an education into sexuality (no. 4).
It is known that “sex” and “sexuality” are concepts whose definition varies
according to one’s chosen point of view and current developed theories. Prior to any
analysis, it is fitting to indicate we must distinguish: 1) chromosomal sex, determined
by genetic makeup; 2) phenotypic sex; 3) hormonal sex (since the secretion of sex
hormones, in some diseases, does not correspond to the subject’s anatomical sex);
4) psycho-social sex, i.e. the sex with which the human subject identifies. “Genital
sexuality” will refer to the act of sexual union, even when cut off from its connection
with the procreative purpose (except in no.1, where several quotes take genital
sexuality as referring to the procreative purpose of sexual intercourse).
The present analysis will study sexuality in its specifically human aspect. The
thesis put forward consists in showing that a rupture exists between animal sexual
behaviour and human sexuality. For that reason, the theses of ethology (Lorenz,
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Watson, etc.) and the more recent ones from sociobiology, whose methodology
consists in comparing animal and human behaviour so as to show behavioural
similarities (mating patterns, territorial demarcation, protection of the progeny, etc.)
will not be studied or even mentioned herein. In terms of its methodology,
sociobiology merits full attention. From the point of view of ethics, its sole merit is the
analysis it makes of those facets of human behaviour that escape our free and
responsible consciousness.
In keeping with its title, the aim of the present study – which of course makes
no pretence of being exhaustive – is to stimulate theoretical reflection on aspects that
are particularly relevant to the field of sexuality. Being much too brief to be
considered even remotely as a sketchy “treatise” on the matter, it is yet too long to
offer the ethics of sexuality any compact handy “recipes” divided into isolated topics.
It banks on the patience of the reader who is interested in confronting, laid out in
condensed yet pondered form, a quasi-synoptic overview of the chief aspects of
sexuality which are neither biological nor medical but specifically human.
The first part, using the support of recent works, attempts to provide some
information on the experience of sexuality in Portugal. The second part, more
extensive, proposes a philosophical-anthropological analysis of sexuality. This
analysis provides grounds to support the two parts that follow, dedicated respectively
to ethical analysis – presented in the form of general principles – and to the
elaboration of guidelines for an education into sexuality.
Since the part developed at greatest length is turned to philosophical analysis
(no. 2), it seemed useful to provide a brief synthesis of this same part (no. 2.12). If
convenience demands it, this synthesis obviates a full reading of the second part.
1. Some data relating to the experience of sexuality in Portugal.
In Portugal, recent information is available thanks to several high-quality
studies. Three of them merit special mention: chapter six, “Love life and sex life,” in
Generations and Values in Contemporary Portuguese Society (1998);3 chapter five,
“Conjugality and Sexuality in Portuguese Youth: Practices and Discourses,” in
Portuguese Youth Today (1998);4 lastly, the dissertation by Valentim R. Aferes,
Sexual Role-playing and Behaviour. Towards a Social Psychology of Sexuality
(1997).5
3
4
5
“Vida amorosa e sexual” in José MACHADO PAIS (Scient. Coord.), Gerações e Valores na
Sociedade Portuguesa Contemporânea. Lisbon, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de
Lisboa and Secretaria de Estado da Juventude, 1998, pp. 407-465.
[JHN: In the text, I have rendered into English the Portuguese titles described in the original footnotes. In
note 8, exceptionally, the titles are given only in English.This is done for the sake of convenience and
does not indicate the existence of translations of these works.]
“Práticas e discursos da conjugalidade e de sexualidade dos jovens portugueses” in Manuel
VILLAVERDE CABRAL and José MACHADO PAIS, Jovens Portugueses de Hoje. Resultados do
Inquérito de 1997. Oeiras, Celta, 1998. Pedro Vasconcelos wrote chapter 5 (pp. 215-305).
Valentim R. AFERES, Encenações e comportamentos sexuais. Para uma psicologia social da
sexualidade. Porto, Afrontamento, 1997 (thesis carried in 1995 before the Faculty of Psychology
and Sciences of Education of Coimbra University).
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While it is impossible to convey the richness of these works, to which the
present analysis addresses the reader, it is fitting to highlight at least some aspects
of their quite pertinent conclusions.
“The great continent of sexual normality, surrounded by small islands of
disorder, has been transformed, it would seem, into a pluralistic, diversified
archipelago of styles of sexual behaviour. This is an interesting finding, that sexuality
should have been discovered as a structuring element of a certain lifestyle. On the
other hand, as we have seen, a considerable heterogamy prevails among the
youngest of the interviewees. Most young people – with women tending to approach
men’s levels – now arrive at marriage carrying a substantial haul of sexual
experience and knowledge. Among the older generations, sexual activity was
understood to be adult behaviour. Today, sexual initiation usually takes place during
adolescence. On the other hand, now that the birth of children can be controlled and
even produced artificially, sexuality has become more autonomous, contrary to the
situation in the old days when birth control depended on an exaggerated discipline of
pleasure. Notwithstanding this, the available information does not allow us to
prognosticate a de-conjugalisation of matrimony, even though sexual initiation
outside a matrimonial context is regarded as normal and the procreative aspect is
only loosely associated with sexual intercourse.”
“(…) The changes in sexual behaviour that have brought, or will bring, the
greatest repercussions are perhaps those introducing the possibility of greater sexual
autonomy among females, although the consequences of these changes to male
sexuality are evident, too. To conclude, young people are apparently the bearers of a
new sexual ethics, much more uninhibited or tolerant than the one that characterised
previous generations. One might say – though this is but an hypothesis deserving
more in-depth work in future investigations – that while the older generations are
guided by values rooted in an ideational framework [ideário] of societal collectivism,
the younger generations embrace more fluctuant values based on societal
individualism. In the first case, individual aspirations are apparently subordinated to
collective causes: social rights, communal identities, ties of emotional dependence.
In the second case, collective causes are apparently subordinated to individual
aspirations: self-fulfilment, private rights, individual initiative. Now, these two value
frameworks are likely to support two different ethics. Among the older generations,
the ideational framework of societal collectivism is conducive to conservative sexual
ethics, defending institutional matrimony, lasting ties, sexual Puritanism. Among the
younger generations – since “modernity” is associated with a “breakaway culture” –
the ideational framework of societal individualism appears to be more strongly
connected to an experimentalistic, fragmented sexual ethics, with room for
ephemeral romantic relationships, for pre-marriage and cohabitation experiments, for
precocious sexual initiation and heterogamous relationships; lastly, one may also
observe a relative tolerance to diverse forms of sexuality considered to be socially or
ideologically on the fringe.” 6
6
These two long excerpts come from the two concluding pages of the chapter “Love life and sexual
life” in the book Gerações e Valores na Sociedade Portuguesa Contemporânea, op. cit, p. 462463. What is meant by ideational framework [ideário] is a coherent set of implicit or explicit
representations that allow an understanding of a certain type of concrete behaviour. The
expression corresponds roughly with the expression “interpretative mold” used in the next section,
“Elements for a philosophical analysis of sexuality.”
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The conclusions reached by Pedro Vasconcelos on conjugality and sexuality
among young people, though they do not disagree with the considerations just
quoted, add important complements on the attitude of young people with regard to
marriage and setting up a new family.
“We may verify, with respect to conjugality, that Portuguese young people
show clear propensity to matrimonial arrangements, for the overwhelming majority
wishes to live with the partner and get married. We have seen that the legitimisation
of marriage resides in an ideology of “love,” which leads – in terms of public
declarations – to downplaying the social attributes of possible partners, for young
people (at least ideologically) regard “love” as being socially de-contextualised. Even
so, most young people reject in a possible partner certain traits – such as the threat
of being sexually promiscuous and begetting children with someone else – traits that
might represent a threat to the obligation of conjugal faithfulness. In fact, the majority
regards unfaithfulness as grounds for rupture. Thus, the conjugal models conveyed
by many young people do accept, albeit conditionally, the possibility of divorce –
which seemingly indicates that the formal tie binding the partners has lost a great
deal of its traditional importance. Indeed, this hypothesis is supported by the abstract
acceptance (total or partial) of informal cohabitation. We also verify the subsistence
of a view of the woman’s role that places her professional achievement second to
traditional maternal tasks. Lastly, we verify that the matrimonial projects of young
people are at the same time parenthood projects.
“Thus in Portugal we still verify some linearity in the models of transition into
adulthood – grosso modo, a standard pattern (familial) life cycle still exists, although
we know that, nowadays, the passage into adulthood takes place later than before
(due to the historical construction of a Youth that becomes more protracted with each
new generation, and to putting off marriage and parenthood to a later age). Young
people leave the family fold to set up new families. In fact, one family leads to
another. Thus, contrary to what F. de Singly affirms, referring to a different cultural
context, Portuguese young people do not show at present an attitude of distance and
indecision regarding marriage. Whatever distance and indecision they may
experience relate to the stages of courting and informal cohabitation – these are
indeed characterised by a principle of reversibility consubstantial with an ethics of
experimentation, particularly in matters of sexuality.” 7
Thus we verify that, from a sociological point of view, the attitude of
Portuguese young people towards sexuality before marriage and the constitution of a
new family is not identical with their attitude after marriage.
Aferes’s study on the “social psychology of sexuality” is set in the intersection
of sociology and psychology; for that very reason it chooses a different pace, also
marked by the style proper to a dissertation addressed to a more exclusively
scientific audience. Among its many good qualities, we might highlight the great
interest of its opening section, dedicated to a historical and typological study of
behaviour vis-à-vis sexuality.8
7
8
This excerpt is taken from the conclusion of the chapter by Pedro Vasconcelos in Jovens
Portugueses de Hoje, op. cit., pp. 301-302.
Cf. Valentim R. AFERES, op. cit., first chapter (“Sexuality, sexology and social psychology”),
whose index deserves transcription: “1.Sexuality. 2.Sexology: The persistence of the biological
postulate (2.1. Protosexology: Sex as reproduction. 2.2.Psychoanalysis: Anatomy as fate.
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Merely as an example, we shall register here a few pointers extracted from the
conclusion of the chapter “Beyond the differential psychology of the sexes: the
persistence of the double standard.” 9
“The results (…) [10] clearly bear out the existence of a double standard on sex
before marriage [i.e. one applying to males, another to females]. Thus, in the age
range under study [18-25], the percentage rate of virginity among males is always
inferior to that among females. While the latter falls below 50% (48.1%) at ages 2021, the male rate in the same age bracket is 16.7%. Likewise, in the 18-19 bracket,
only one-third of boys against three-quarters of girls are virgins. On average, the first
sexual experience of the men precedes the women’s by about one year. The men
had more sexual partners during the preceding year as well as over their entire life
cycle; likewise, they had more “one-night stands,” they wish to have sexual relations
with a greater number of partners and entertain hopes of having them in the future.
They think more about sex, masturbate more often and have a greater experience of
and predisposition to orgasm;11 they show greater permissiveness, admitting more
readily to occasional sex, sex without commitment and impersonal sex. Women, on
the other hand, show greater knowledge of contraceptive methods and, as regards
attitudes, they are openly more receptive to sex education and family planning.
“As for the first sexual intercourse, less men than women declared they were
in love with the partner, although the percentages for both were above 50% (62.7%
for men and 88.5% for women). In situations where passion exists, the age of the first
partner also conforms to the classic pattern: the man is older than the woman. If we
turn to the histories of courting, we find no difference between the sexes as regards
the total number of boy/girlfriends, nor as regards the number of those with whom
they engaged in sexual congress; unfaithfulness, however, both real and imagined, is
higher among males.
“Lastly, there is a marked convergence of both sexes on the plane of
normative orientation: both men and women adhere to conjugal heterosexuality,
subordinated to pleasure and relatively non-centred on genitality. Ideally, such
sexuality is to be lived within the institutional framework of a Catholic marriage. (…)
“In synthesis, as regards both prevailing behaviour and prevailing attitudes
and norms, the two sexes agree that sexuality before marriage is to be pleasureoriented and experienced in the context of a lasting emotional relationship. The
majority therefore shares the script of “sex with affection.” Adherence to “sex for the
sake of sex,” on the other hand, continues to be almost exclusive to males. In other
words, the data obtained allow us to conclude that a conditional double standard on
sex exists.” 12
It is important to recall that the sociological analysis does not use the terms
“norm” or “normative” to say what is ethically advisable or imperative, but only to
describe what is held as normative by the subjects of the experiment. It is a matter of
9
10
11
12
2.3.Modern Sexology: Physiology as rule. 2.4.From the naturalisation of sex to models of sexual
development). 3.Social Psychology: Social construction and personal meaning of sexuality.”
“Para além da psicologia diferencial dos sexos: a persistência do duplo padrão”.
“The empirical analyses in the present investigation are based on responses by 587 undergraduate
students (563 at Coimbra University and 24 at Coimbra’s Higher College of Education) to three
questionnaires (…) filled out in collective sessions held between 1990 and 1993” (ibid, p. 104).
[JHN: “(…) masturbam-se mais e têm maior experiência do orgasmo do ponto de vista atitudinal”]
Ibid., pp.139-141.
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describing “opinions” about the normative and not of making a philosophical stand
about the contents of ethical norms. The error of a superficial ethical reading would
consist in operating, almost spontaneously, an undue logical jump, as exemplified by
the sentence, “Just about everybody does it, so I can do it, too.” This sophism hides
an undue jump from the sociological plane to the ethical plane. This simple example
makes it evident that a sociological analysis may never replace an ethical and
philosophical analysis, just as the latter may never dispense with sociological
investigation.
2. Elements for a philosophical analysis of sexuality
Sexuality is primordially a human phenomenon rooted in the body, not an
objectively biological experience upon which a conscious and ethical superstructure
imposes. This proposition or thesis contains an affirmative component and a negative
one; the negative component refutes the existence in human beings of a form of
dualism between their body and their consciousness, a dualism which contemporary
philosophy – at least in the thinking of its most accredited representatives – can
accept no longer.
The philosophical description of a human phenomenon is to be done on the
basis of an understanding of how it appears as a whole. It is not, therefore, through
the decomposition and isolation of its dimensions or of its constitutive elements that
we shall make sexuality intelligible; likewise, it is not the study of sexual perversions
that must serve as gateway to the understanding of healthy sexuality. An example
removed from the problems under study will confirm this methodological standpoint.
We understand the use of a motorcar when it functions correctly; but it is when an
malfunction occurs that we have the obligation to open the engine and check the
state of each component part. Knowledge of the function of each of the motorcar’s
constitutive elements still does not provide an understanding of how the motorcar is
to be used, much less of the direction it will take. Thus, sexual perversions may be
construed as malfunctions in our sex life, but it won’t be the knowledge of all possible
malfunctions that will direct us to the meaning of healthy sexuality. Hence, it is by
focussing on what is proposed as healthy sexuality that the present analysis must
proceed. It is true that, as in crystals, invisible planes of cleavage exist even when
they are not apparent; it is equally true that diseases or perversions will not become
manifest in purely chaotic fashion but along pre-established cleavage planes,
discernible perhaps to the clinical eye of specialists. Our task, however, consists in
discerning subtly such cleavage planes starting from the practice of healthy sexuality,
sexuality considered to be “normal.”
The concept of normality is complex and ambiguous. From the noun “norm”
two adjectives were derived, each with a different meaning: “normal” and “normative.”
While normality refers to what is normal, normativeness implies a certain model or
procedure that must be conformed to. On the other hand, “normal” may also denote
the mean, the intermediary point among several cases either extreme or merely
different; it may refer to a standard behaviour that actually might not exist anywhere,
yet works as a referential axis that permits determining the possibility of a nonnormative ideal. For example, although a man is not “normally” bald (before the age
of 40), that does not mean that a given bald man is not “normal,” for we are not using
a normative ideal but a statistical datum. We shall attempt, then, to understand the
“human” phenomenon of “normal” sexuality.
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2.1. The sexed body 13
The evolution of sexual practices over the centuries and the changes that
have taken place as to their social admissibility raise a far-reaching question. What is
the meaning of human sexual differentiation? We must return to this side of the
classic issue of the end purposes of marriage to try to understand sexuality as a
human phenomenon. Evidently, sexuality is rooted in the body. Hence, it will be
understood in terms of the relation between the human person and its body. If human
beings were but objective bodies, biological machines, the understanding of sexuality
would be achieved by the biological analysis of how it functions. But here our
supposition is that the specificity of human beings resides in a fundamental modality
of their existence: humans are beings who experience in their lives the possibility of
seeking to understand themselves and reflect on the meaning and value of their acts.
Thus some distance is introduced between experiencing life and reflecting about it;
and this reflexive use of intelligence is a distinguishing attribute of human beings.
Thus, the meaning of human sexual differentiation involves consideration on
two levels: as it is spontaneously perceived and experienced, and as it is reflected by
thought. Indeed, reflexive thought tries to make explicit and shape into a theme
[tematizar] the meaning that has already been experienced immediately and
spontaneously by the human being. It is not our intention, therefore, to affirm that
only reflexive thought is able to discern the meaning of human behaviour, of sexual
behaviour in this case.
Now, regardless of their wishes, human beings spontaneously attribute to
sexuality a meaning that is always beyond the purely biological. As a force or drive,
sexuality is a search for the pleasure that will allay internal tension, but human
beings, given the capacity for representation and imagination that inhabits them,
“graft” onto this driving force, as it were, the universe of representations. We shall
forgo an in-depth commentary of this affirmation, noting only that it states the
problem Freud came across in his attempt to explain “primary repression.” It is at this
level that, keeping to the terminology of the initial considerations above, driving force
twines with meaning. The meaning is represented and imagined in non-reflexive
manner, and for that very reason it will be possible to make it explicit in reflexive
manner at a later moment.
Following these considerations on the interweaving of driving force and
meaning, we must discern how sexuality is rooted in the body, that is, show that the
body is by its constitution a sexed body. This expression, strongly emphasised by the
phenomenological school, signifies that human sexuality is more than just a function
connected with the sexual act, its representation or its specific pleasure. By their
bodies, human beings open out to the world, to objects, to others. Thus, human
sexuality affects our every gesture, which convey this opening out; it stamps all our
behaviour, not only that relating directly to the sexual encounter. Actually, this
provides the feminist movement with the most solid grounds for its action; it feminist
13
We speak of the sexed body and not of the sexed person, first of all, because the “sexed body”
was developed as a theme by the phenomenological theory of the body, precisely to emphasise
that the body is not reducible to the objective and objectifiable organism. Furthermore, the
expression “sexed body” brings into relief just what was meant by “sexed person” or “sexed human
life,” i.e. that sexuality, though rooted in the body, affects all the constitutive dimensions of the
person.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
12/39
action were confined to isolated protests of a socio-political kind (e.g. the “quotas” in
Parliament and various other institutions or organisations), it would never rise above
the level of circumstantial and possibly debatable demands. The sexed body is
coextensive with the human mode of opening out to the world – this is the reason
why the world-visions of females and males do not coincide and never will. We can
understand then the correct import of Merleau-Ponty’s statement, which forcefully
conveys the discovery of the human being as sexed being: “If the sexual history of a
man is the key to his life, it is because in a man’s sexuality is projected his manner
and attitude toward the world, that is, toward his time and other men.”14 This
statement does not mean that everything in life is sexual, or that sexuality suffuses
every type of behaviour; it means that a reciprocal relation of expression exists
between the sexed body and subjective life. It will be worth our while to look into a
few corollaries of this interpretation.
The first consequence has to do with encounters between people. When they
enter into a relation of proximity – not necessarily sexual – their bodies are never
neutral from the point of view of their emotive charge. In other words, it is never a
matter of bodies as they are described in manuals of anatomy or physiology. Each of
the bodies is charged with a force of desire that emanates from it and, consciously or
unconsciously, calls to the other, which likewise is not a neutral body. The encounter
of two sexed bodies is at the same time an encounter of two desires. The
spontaneous attraction or repulsion between those bodies, which often generates
sympathy or antipathy for no conscious reason, attests to the presence in those
bodies of something that is not purely rational. Thus, the concrete encounter (not via
Internet !) between two or more human beings will never be purely rational, since the
conceptual language used in their dialogue originates and develops from the
affective dimension of existence.15 Even an encounter mediated by writing, through a
book or the Internet, implies a previous imaginary projection of the male or female
identity of the interlocutor, with repercussions on the expectations about his/her
responses, aggressiveness or affability.
We have just introduced the concept of affectivity. Human beings are
“affected” through their sexed body, in such way that this affectivity touches every
register of their personality. Affectivity is not, before all else, a feeling of pleasure or
repulsion, but the ability to be affected by the presence of the other, by the events
that concern him/her, as well as the ability to invest with feeling the response to the
other’s presence. Before we talk of friendship or love, of courting or aversion, we
must try to understand the significance of the presence of affectivity in connection
with the sexed body. Robots built by human beings are able to simulate affectivity (as
we may verify in TV series), but they are unable now and ever of rooting genuine
affectivity in a sexed body. Affectivity is intimately connected with the sexed body,
inasmuch as it constitutes the meeting-point between the driving force and subjective
consciousness. That is why affectivity introduces some opacity in relations between
human beings. The impossibility of transforming into full conceptual light the affective
opacity arising from the driving force is often responsible for the distortions of
meaning that crop up in attempts at dialogue and mutual understanding (for example,
14
15
Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard, 1945 (1st ed.),
p.185. [JHN: “(…) o seu modo de ser para com o mundo, isto é, para com o tempo e para com os
outros homens.”]
[JHN: “uma vez que a linguagem conceptual no qual se constitui o diálogo se erige dentro da e por
cima da dimensão afectiva da existência.”]
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
13/39
the same words uttered by two different people might be received differently,
according to the trust or suspicion each interlocutor inspires: we may take them in
one case as an attempt at manipulation, in the other as a genuine offer to
collaborate). In every dialogue, the climate of trust and of previous understanding is
conditioned by elements of an affective nature which, ultimately, spring from the
expression of the sexed body.
The root of affectivity bears closer examination. The possibility of being
affected implies the existence in human beings of a primal want. The fact that one is
man only or woman only means that all others condense in him or her but one aspect
of humanity. This situation has repercussions not only on sexual behaviour but also
on the whole of one’s existence. The want experienced is not only something lacking,
which impels men and women to the opposite sex, it is also want as a division within
each human being. In other words, the cleavage within me that is coextensive with
this want cannot be resolved by the other. The other, no matter how deep the
friendship or love that binds me to the other, or the other to me, will never be able to
fill the void, the want I may experience as existential and affective loneliness. How
many love affairs have foundered because they expected from love what love cannot
and must not give, lest it reduce the other to the function of an “object” used to fill my
want? Failure to accept this element of the human condition may lead to a misguided
escape forward: such as seeking a solution to this want by means of an indefinite
multiplication or diversification of sexual encounters. On the contrary, the
acknowledgement of the sexed dimension leads to acceptance of both “my own”
invincible solitude and my orientation towards the other, the human being who is
different from me. The historical and cultural manifestations of this solitude and
orientation undergo constant, unstoppable evolution, but do not change what, in our
eyes, appears to be the fundamental consequence of sexuality in a sexed body.
2.2. Sexuality, desire and time
When we speak of sexuality, we must not confuse the terms instinct, desire,
drive, and need. After Freud – however we might assess the pertinence of the
concepts he made central to his theory – we may no longer speak of a “sexual
instinct” in human beings. Instinct implies, in effect, the presence of a predetermined, stable behaviour in seeking the object that allays tension in the animal
organism. The introduction of the concept of drive into the analysis of sexuality allows
us to understand that sexuality undergoes an evolution from birth and the infant
stage up to the development of genital sexuality. It is unnecessary to comment at
length the Freudian drive thesis: “the notion of drive (…) is analysed in terms of the
model of sexuality, but from the start in Freudian theory the sex drive opposes other
drives. It is known that Freud’s theory of drives always remains dualist in nature; the
first dualism invoked is the one between the sex drive and the ego drive or selfpreservation drive; by the latter, Freud means the great needs or great functions
indispensable to the preservation of the individual, apprehending his model from
hunger and the feeding function.” 16 Later, Freud would group those drives into two
categories: the life impulse in contradistinction to the death impulse.
16
LAPLANCHE, Jean and PONTALIS, J. B., Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse, Paris, P.U.F., 1971,
p.361.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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What is important to emphasise is the evolving character of the forms the sex
drive assumes; the search for gratification is the key to understanding this evolution.
The stages of infant sexuality hinge on the areas of the body where that search for
gratification is localised. One might object that this evolution is still unconnected with
sexuality, relating only to attempts to allay tensions in the body; likewise, one might
denounce the so-called Freudian “pan-sexualism” that analyses infantile evolution in
the light of sexual behaviour. But this double objection would not do justice to Freud,
who wanted to emphasise how rooted was the sex drive in the search for
gratification: not sexual at the start, this search will eventually become sexual due to
a development whose stages Freud describes. For the purposes of the present
analysis, it will suffice to accept a result of great importance: the sex drive differs from
instinct in that it has no immediately pre-determined object – alike to a force, it
invests different representations and objects in the course of its long evolution. Thus,
what common sense calls “sexual desire” corresponds to the dynamic fixation of the
sex drive upon an object, with this object “normally” taken to be, in adulthood,
another human being.
This brief detour into Freud had the advantage of showing the dynamic and
temporal character of human sexuality. Sexuality, not fixed once and for all, becomes
capable of evolving through time and of channelling its driving force to serve nonsexual ends; all facets of human creativity, be they affective, scientific, cultural,
aesthetic or professional, may be understood in general, from the point of view of this
driving force, as derivatives and sublimations of this force. Nonetheless, we should
err in limiting ourselves to this point of view, as if human achievements were reduced
to being an expression of a driving force of sexual origin.
The task we face at once upon gaining awareness of the vicissitudes of
desire is at least twofold: we must understand that, due to multiple representations
and multiple encounters with living people, the driving energies of human beings
intersect in the sphere of the “symbolic order” with the various spheres of desire –
especially the desire to own, the desire for power, the desire to be known and
achieve recognition, the desire to love and be loved –; secondly, we must administer
our time of life in such way that our existence be not a gyrating weathervane, as if it
were at each moment but a passive expression of the force of the winds of desire,
blowing from whichever quadrant.
In simple terms, one might say that all human beings, as they construct their
existence, face the task of unifying in some way their desires and giving them a
measure of continuity. In the domain of the affective and sexual life, this unification
and continuity in time is called faithfulness. Even before its due recognition as an
ethical quality, as faithfulness to another, faithfulness is before all else, faithfulness to
oneself. In the domain of their sexual and affective lives, human beings cannot
pursue a thousand different goals, and will destroy themselves if they try to live their
sexuality in purely animal fashion – unable to be animal and no more, the human
being cannot abdicate from the ethical work inherent in living the experience of
human sexuality.
Faithfulness, as administration of affectivity and sexuality through time, is not
therefore a matter of chance or option; it is a fundamental condition of human
existence. The forms and duration of this faithfulness are not the same in different
epochs and cultures, but a sexuality and an administration of affective desire stripped
of all preoccupation with faithfulness can only be self-destructive. Prior to being
José Henrique Neto
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ethical, faithfulness, from the point of view of sexuality, is personal coherence
through life’s experiences.17
2.3. The prohibition of incest as basis of culture
Animals feel no concern in their sexual behaviour with the problem of the
turning of generations, but human beings planted an interdiction: incest. What does
this prohibition mean?
Sexuality is important in that it lies at the crossroads of nature and culture. As
driving force, it springs from organic life, but as human social experience it is basilar
to culture. This time round, what is at stake is no longer the “individual” meaning of
sexuality, as it were, but its social relevance. That is why one of the chief and
primordial tasks of human culture consists in organising “rules of kinship.” Such rules
structure family law and constitute a kind of a priori uncontested by the Law. Of
course, the taboo on incest is not always respected; the infractions reach frightening
proportions at times. Still, all cultures contain rules for the choice of sexual partner.18
In the past, the most current arguments used to justify the prohibition of incest
were based on the biological protection of “the blood.” Those reasons, drawn by and
large from biology, to which accrued similar ones drawn from psychology, would be
interpreted today in terms of genetics. However, after works such as Levi-Strauss’s
Elementary Structures of Kinship,19 it seems clear that we can no longer look to
biology for the fundamental reasons of the prohibition of incest. The thesis by LeviStrauss is entirely valid at the level to which it keeps, that of the structural analysis of
society. In a way not consciously perceived by its members, there is a kind of a priori
underlying human society: the obligation to look for one’s sexual partner outside the
given family group. This a priori is a dynamic structure of social organisation, but “in
its dynamics, the structure brings forth a principle that is no longer of a structural
nature. (…) (Now,) the organising principle of kinship systems is the law of
alliance.”20 The prohibition of incest is the other side of the coin to the opening out of
human beings to a dynamics of alliance: matrimonial rules since primitive societies to
the present conform to a dynamic structure that operates as an “organising principle”
we may interpret in terms of alliance. This principle conducts human society from
nature to culture. We are dealing here, as Jean Ladrière pointed out, with the
“emergence of the properly human world,” because alliance is the expression, in the
social domain, of the human opening to the universality of reason. Everything takes
place as if this opening to the universal implied a negative threshold, short of which
human beings would shut themselves against the necessity of opening out socially.
It is possible to transpose to the psychological and ethical domain this
necessity of opening out to the universal. One of the founding a priori of ethics is the
rejection of fusion. What is meant by fusion is an attempt at symbiosis that inverts the
dynamic trend of the construction of the individual person. This theme has multiple
17
18
19
20
[JHN: “Antes de ser ética a fidelidade é, do ponto de vista da sexualidade, a coerência da pessoa
na vivência do tempo.”]
“Sexual partner” is the most appropriate expression, for lack of a better one, when pondering
situations that have not yet been clarified, as to the partner’s sexual identity or the institutional
status of the sexual relationship.
Claude LEVI-STRAUSS, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté, Paris, Payot, 1949.
Jean LADRIÈRE, “Le structuralisme entre la science et la philosophie,” in Vie sociale et destinée,
Gembloux, Duculot, 1973, p. 189.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
16/39
expressions: the Freudian nostalgia of a return to the maternal bosom, the cultural
theme of the voracious and omnipresent mother, the blind obedience parents exact
from their children. Fusion may exert damage at psychological, ethical, religious or
spiritual level (e.g. through domineering forms of counselling); in any case, it impedes
the unfolding of human alterity.
Thus the social prohibition of incest twines with the psychological rejection of
fusion, as if both incest and fusion acted as a lock impeding the necessary opening
of the human being to alterity. The mere minimum of the search for alterity on the
sexual plane, therefore, is the search for a sexual partner outside the immediate
circle of the family. Nothing could express better that sexuality will not be humanly
healthy if does not place and accept this first damper on the sex drive. The presence
of a principle of reciprocity and universality in the rules of alliance is incompatible with
sexual relations unfettered by any rules.
2.4. Sexuality and reciprocity in relations of affection
Is it possible to speak of sexuality without speaking of affection and love? As
we verified, it is not convenient to approach the complex problems of sexuality
through the doors of love. Yet these doors must not remain closed too long, on pain
of shutting us out from the most human of the meanings of sexuality. A passage from
Merleau-Ponty will ease our transition from the preceding considerations: “It is not
only the object of love that escapes all definition in terms of instinct, but also the very
way we love. It is known that adult loving, based on trusting tenderness – which does
not demand at every instant new proof of absolute attachment, and takes the other
as he or she is, allowing for distance and autonomy – is a conquest, according to
psychoanalysis, over the kind of childish “fixation” (aimance) that is all-demanding at
every instant and is responsible for whatever may subsist of the voracious and the
impossible in all loving.”21
The maturity of a relation of affection blossoms with the ability to enter into a
relationship that respects the alterity of one’s sexual partner. To this effect, the other
may not be but an object of “my” drive, on pain of being merely a means to the end of
“my” satisfaction. That is why we might say, in quasi Hegelian fashion, that the other
is respected only if I desire in the other his or her own desire; in other words, it is the
reciprocity of the acceptance of desire that constitutes the genuine relation of
affection. Here we find, then, the nexus between sex and affection – physical
sexuality spontaneously seeks physical sex, but sexuality infused with affection and
attachment meets sexually with the other mediated by the other’s affection and
attachment. The cosmic-vital force that evolved in human beings as sex drive meets
with the other as body inhabited by a face or, reciprocally, as a face expressing itself
through the totality of its sexed body.
Thus, sexual love takes on a thousand forms: passionate love, with its
devastating character, fairly resembling short-lived fireworks; serene trusting love,
which is able to let the other to follow his or her path because, even far away, the
other carries me within, just as I keep the other present in me; first love, still unsure of
itself, which tries to offer guarantees of stability and profoundness quite beyond its
real capacities, etc.
21
Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, Signes, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, p.289.
José Henrique Neto
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No description exhausts the mystery of love or even of sexual love. The
phenomenon of orgasm, through its ecstatic aspect, opens the human being to a
dimension of the sacred, and to one of death, too – losing momentarily their selfcontrol, man and woman feel united in an escape from themselves, as if it were
outside their bodies that they reached together to the origin of life and to one moment
when life stops, immobilised in a seemingly timeless instant. Indeed, the Lacan
School of psychoanalysis strongly emphasised the subterranean link of the sexual
union with death, as identity between absolute repose and exiting the Self.
On the other hand, mark the interest manifested by every religion in the
phenomenon of sexuality. The desire for plenitude imagined or sought in the sexual
encounter may be interpreted as being syntonic or as being antagonic to the
happiness expected from divine transcendence; in that regard, the positions of the
various religions vary,22 and within one religion – e.g. Christianity – the emphases
laid on this or that aspect also vary, evolving with the times. For the purposes of the
present analysis, it will suffice to mention the symbolic proximity of sex, the sacred
and death. Inverting our perspective, it is quite understandable that all religions
should feel challenged to deal with the complex problems of sex and the sexual
union. Since religion contains a promise of happiness or self-fulfilment through a
relationship with Transcendence or through the exercise of ascesis, it must sooner or
later enter into a dialogue with the more profound forms of human happiness.
In one of his stimulating books, The Art of Loving,23 Erich Fromm interrogates
the necessity that impels human beings to love. He considers it clear and almost selfevident that the human being “emerged from the animal kingdom, from instinctive
adaptation, and transcended nature – although he never abandons it.” The state of
separation and loneliness is the hallmark of the human condition, so much so that life
becomes an “unbearable prison. [The human being] would slip into madness if he
were unable to escape this prison and forge ahead, uniting in some way or another
with other men, with the outside world.” According to Fromm, it is the anguish of
separation that originates the search for love. Without love, the differences between
the sexes make men and women total strangers to each other; that is the message of
the story of Adam and Eve: “by becoming aware of themselves and of each other,
man and woman also become aware of their separation and of their difference,
inasmuch as they belong to different sexes. But when they recognise their
separation, they remain strangers to each other (which is brought out by the fact that
Adam defends himself accusing Eve instead of trying to defend her). The awareness
of human separation, without love’s reunion, is a source of shame. It is at the same
time a source of guilt and of anguish.” 24 Fromm proceeds to describe the three
partial solutions, felt to be inadequate today, used to satisfy the need to love:
“orgiastic states (abolition of the separate I);” “conformity,” with the abolition of
differences and with every sphere of public and private life being invaded by
uniformity (everyone hears the same music, dresses alike, flocks to the same holiday
22
23
24
Cf., for example, the Tibetan mandalas figuring as sexual congress the union of the Buddha with
wisdom. It is well known that Hinduism attributes cosmic value to sexual representations of its
theogonies.
Erich FROMM, The Art of Loving, Harper & Row, 1965. [JHN: The following excerpts are rendered
from the author’s Portuguese version of the French translation (L´art d´aimer, Paris, Desclée de
Brouwer, 1995).]
Ibid, French edition, p. 25. Cf. also Marie BALMARY, La divine origine. Dieu n´a pas créé l´homme,
Paris, Grasset, 1993 (chap. 6).
José Henrique Neto
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spots, watches the same TV channels). Thus the anguish of separation is apparently
overcome. The third partial solution is “creative work”: “in all kinds of creative work,
the person who creates unites with his subject matter, which represents the world
external to that person.” But these partial forms used to remedy the separation are
not the same as true love. Nor must sexual relations be confused with love: “loveless
sexual intercourse never fills the distance between two human beings but for an
instant.” 25
Reciprocity of affection in shared sexuality entails acceptance of the other,
embracing the other while recognising his or her invincible, uncontrollable difference,
and valuing it. All relations of domination are neutralised, in the reciprocity of love, by
game playing, which negates the dimension of exercise of power over another. That
is why genuine reciprocity of affection makes for vulnerability: not expecting from the
other, at least to start with, any gestures of domineering superiority or an overbearing
possessive objectification, every human being experiences as aggression all forms of
affective relationship that do not respect him or her as a unique individual. The kind
of objectification that reduces one person to an instrument or means to the other’s
pleasure has multiple modes, not all of them physical. Objectification may be
psychological, biological, medical, economic, cultural, etc. Common to all these
possibilities is an ethical default: they fail to recognise the inviolable alterity of the
other human being.
Sexual union reveals thus its first genuinely human meaning:26 as union, it is a
reciprocal union, that is, “a union with” another human being mediated by the
language of the body; in short, it is a “communion” of life. This communion of life
goes beyond the biological, for the sexed body, as analysed above (cf. 2.1., “The
sexed body”), affects all registers of human existence.
2.5. The roles of the third person and of the Institution
In the animal kingdom, sexual unions obey the force of instinct: their objective
function is the perpetuation of the species – programmed by its scheme of instincts,
the sexual pleasure of the animal is the means used by nature to prevent the
extinction of the species as individuals die. If human beings were primordially or
merely “animal,” their sexuality would also have as its first “objective function” the
perpetuation of the human species. But when we consider him or her as person,
each human being appears as a self-aware consciousness that integrates all the
dimensions it is composed of. Now, it is evident that the body “organises” itself by the
multiplicity of its “objective” functions, but what constitutes a human person as person
is not the simple set of its organic functions. Those functions constitute but the
biological organism of the person, or, more accurately, the person as organism and
not yet as person. That is why we may not, from a philosophical point of view,
approach sexuality primarily as the biological function of procreation.
We face, therefore, an exemplary instance of the case in which the most
evident fact (“it is from the sexual union – up to the advent of medically-assisted
25
26
Erich FROMM, L´art d´aimer, (op. cit.), p. 28.
The same idea may be enunciated in terms of end purpose: since meaning (sense) has an
orientation and a specific dynamics corresponds to this orientation, we may say that the first end
purpose of human sexual union is a communion of life. This idea will be taken up again in the
ethical part of this analysis.
José Henrique Neto
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procreation – that human beings originate”) is not the fundamental principle for
understanding the phenomenon under analysis, namely human sexuality. But having
stated it, this observation does not allow us to dismiss the no less genuinely human
purpose of procreation that is attached to sexual union.
The birth of a child brings forth a third person that “stands in the middle” of the
relation of affection between two human beings of different sex.
From what kind of love comes the child? Surely, the importance of the relation
of affection in our sex life does not entail the impossibility of separating affection from
genitality. In other words, it does happen – perhaps in innumerable proportions – that
a sexual union, in opposition to its primordial purpose, be totally or in part
unconnected with a relationship of affection. However frequent, that fact may not be
considered as conforming to the fundamental purpose of human sex life. It also
happens that the sexual union, usually within institutional marriage, has been sought
for the exclusive purpose of procreation – it is legitimate to think that the cultural
standards of Western societies contributed, albeit laterally (and on a scale we need
not analyse here), to render this fact “normal” or “usual.” The result, then, is that the
sexual partner “serves” the end of procreation, is a means to reproduction, being
reduced implicitly to the role of “co-genitor.” When taken to the extreme, which
happily seems not to be the usual case, this situation means that the sexual partner
is viewed in terms of its animal or biological breeding function. As everyone knows,
the technological advances made available by science and medicine made it
possible to disconnect the reproductive function from the sexual act; but if the case in
point has to do with a way to remedy some disfunction in the reproductive function,
the separation of the sexual act from procreation may not be considered as an
instrumentalisation of the sexual partner. Still, it is hard to see, from the perspective
of an anthropological analysis, how the separation of the sexual union from
procreation outside the scope of a medical treatment does not presuppose a
separation of affectivity and sexuality. In effect, it is just this separation that lies at the
root of the reduction of sexuality to an exclusively biological function, be it one of
organic pleasure or one of procreation.
The presence of the newborn in the midst of the relation between man and
woman attests to the indispensability of the social institution. On the one hand, the
fact that the child does not spring immediately during the act of generation introduces
the possibility of the father’s skirting responsibility [desresponsabilização], when he
does not assume the paternity. In such cases, the institution is called to exercise its
“regulating” function, in the imputation of responsibility as well as in the assistance it
offers towards the education of the children.
Yet, was not the institution already present even before the child was born?
Indeed it was somewhat artificial to have put off until now the intervention of the
social institution of marriage. But here is what we gained by waiting: on the one hand,
it is alliance, in the full human meaning of the concept, that grounds the sexual
relationship of man and woman and explains the social and institutional forms of
marriage; on the other hand, the social institution as a whole is announced by the
presence of the “third party” incarnated in the newborn. The generation of a new
human being, in effect, does not only concern the progenitors but also the whole of
society. That is why, though the alliance between a man and a woman only concerns
them, the external, visible institutional form must be regulated by society. Not for the
end of applying fetters to this alliance, as often thought today, but, at least ideally, to
José Henrique Neto
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help and facilitate this alliance, as if its social officialisation acted as a stimulant to
overcome the obstacles of time. Such is the institutional form of marriage. It is then
understandable that, in societies wherein this assistance and protection are no longer
real or perceived as real, marriage should enter into a crisis. In truth, it is not the
alliance that is in a state of crisis but its institutional form – that is, marriage as an
institutional form. Then, social policy makers attempt to remedy the situation by the
invention of other institutional forms that will circumvent the crisis: de facto union,
economic communion, the covenant of social union, etc.27 The difference resides in
the more or less stable form of social commitment assumed in the alliance between
two sexual partners. From the point of view of a theoretical analysis, such sociopolitical measures relating to forms of union that do not bear the name “marriage” do
no more than confirm the impossibility of dispensing with the social institution when it
comes to living sexuality over a long time. The role of the institution is not only to
promulgate the fundamental prohibitions, such as incest, but also to organise the
rules of alliance, so as to make the latter feasible, stable and fecund. From this point
of view, the “crisis in marriage,” so often stigmatised today, reflects the crisis in a
society that has lost sense of the assistance it can and must render to protect the
alliance and the family cell.
Within the institutional scope of the alliance there exists an aspect of the
institution qua institution that has not been sufficiently considered. Is it or is it not in
the best interests of society that there be children? Is it or is it not in the best interests
of society that these children should be able to grow in a healthy, stable environment,
rich in affection? It is highly probable that no society would give a negative answer.
But Western societies seem rather blind when it comes to the consequences of
seeing to their own survival: in effect, a deeply individualistic a priori underlies the
demand of equal rights for institutional marriage and for other forms of union between
sexual partners. This demand, which might be understandable if only the interests of
individuals were at stake, ceases to be understandable when the “best interests” of
the social and political community are brought to the fore. It is by the mediation of the
institution, therefore, that sexuality interferes directly with the common good. Now,
though it is true that the common good is the good of everyone, it is not equated with
the immediate and apparent determination of the individual good. The issue
demanding urgent examination, therefore, concerns the consequences in terms of
“social” interest of the institutional forms of sexual union.
2.6. Sexuality and politics
The understanding of sexuality must be mediated by politics on several
counts. As we verified at the end of the analysis of affective reciprocity, the
“successful” human sexual union is the one that exorcises aggression, transforming it
by and by into amorous play. But this success is never definitively assured; that is
why a relation of affection is, in its constitutive vulnerability, threatened with
regression to an encounter of domination and power. The domination of the body and
mind of the sexual partner may attain to great perversity, as is well known.28 The
27
28
[JHN: união de facto, comunhão de vida económica, pacto social de união.]
Cf. François DUYCKAERTS, La formation du lien sexuel, Bruxelas, Dessart, 1964 (3rd ed.), 2nd
chapter.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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Faust myth, a fundamental myth in Western culture,29 is never far removed, even if
its peripeteia is other than political.
The introduction of the issue of power and domination is not limited, however,
to the intersubjective experience of individual sexuality. At stake are the history of
culture and the slow transformation of usage and custom. The most prominent facts,
from a cultural point of view, are the centuries-old subordination of women to men, as
well as the repression of sexuality among the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth century.
The first phenomenon, that of domination within the relation of affection
(domination of man over woman or [emotional] blackmail of man by woman), appears
as a fact that is sufficiently known and illustrated – in literature and cinema, for
example – thus dispensing commentary at length; it is an instance of power
exercised at the private level of the relationship more than at the public level of the
culture. One must point out nevertheless that the political dimension intersects the
private exercise of domination through the codes of the institution. Until recently, the
man was “lord” of his wife; male infidelity had not the same weight as female
infidelity, etc. The evolution of jurisprudence and legislation concerning the family
contains, undoubtedly, much new information likely to prove the intersection of the
private character of domination with its public and political character.
One other political fact extends across all episodes of the hard-won conquest
of equality between the sexes. This conquest is still far from reaching safe harbour,
but its motion is so dynamic that the next century is already prefigured as the century
of women! 30 In Portugal, there is a “Committee for the Equality of Women’s Rights”
but it has not seemed necessary to institute a “Committee for the Equality of Men’s
Rights” – which is in itself quite symptomatic. On the other hand, there are numerous
studies on the evolution of women’s place in society (on girl’s education, the right to
vote, etc.). Well worth mentioning in this regard are the five volumes of the History of
Women in the West, from which the following passage by Françoise Collin was
extracted: 31 “The constitution of a space that was truly common to men and women,
this being as ever the principal goal of feminism, inevitably calls upon the theories of
equality. But this equality must be understood as an equality of rights, not as an
equalisation of identities, which actually would turn to the benefit of the existing male
identity. And it must also permit an articulation of the individual or collective
differences, without thereby defining them a priori. The democratic space is
heterogeneous and creative. Thus the twentieth century has modified the conception
of equality developed by the eighteenth century, based on a vision of the sexes alike
to that of races, cultures or even religions, and requiring now a redefinition of
democracy and citizenship.” 32 The compass of feminism is wider than the struggle
against male domination; in effect, its intention is to circumscribe anew nearly every
facet of citizenship and work organisation in civilian society. Here, it is not important
29
30
31
32
Cf. Georges THINÈS, Le mythe de Faust et la dialectique du temps, Paris, L´Âge d´Homme, 1989.
Cf. the statistics in the Reports of the Fundação das Universidades [Universities Foundation]
assessing the various university degrees. In nearly every one – save for engineering – females
predominate by a large number.
Georges DUBY and Michelle PERROT (dir.), História das Mulheres no Ocidente, 5 vol., Lisbon,
Afrontamento, 1993-1995 (transl. from the Italian Storia delle Donne, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 19901991).
Françoise COLLIN, “Diferença e diferendo. A questão das mulheres na Filosofia,” in História das
Mulheres no Ocidente, op. cit., vol. 5, p. 346. Cf. also (pp. 583-611) “O sujeito mulher. O feminismo
dos anos 1960-1980”.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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to highlight the historical steps of this progression but the mutation in the mental
schemes, symbolic representations and linguistic expressions that underpin the
understanding sex, Eros, pleasure and sexuality itself.
In the history of sexuality, a few breakthroughs are usually emphasised. The
most important took place in the course of the nineteenth century – the political
rupture of the French Revolution was accompanied by other ruptures, literary as well
as social. As regards the manner of living sexuality, take the writings of Sade and
Fourier, one before, the other after the revolution. “Thus the alternative between
sublimation and libertinism is somewhat eroded; something is introduced into the
language that lends new importance to writing of sex. ‘Sade, love liberated from the
mud of Heaven,’ says René Char about the same time.” 33
This revolution in the referential axes of sexuality was differently described by
authors such as Adorno and Horkheimer, of the Frankfurt School,34 or Michel
Foucault, whose relatively recent History of Sexuality 35 is an obligatory detour
regarding the mutations in the symbolic referential axes of sexuality. We shall try, in a
few brief considerations, to discern some of the principal elements of those two lines
of analysis, which would merit commentary at greater length.
According to the two classic representatives of the Frankfurt School, it is the
connection between Logos and Eros that suffers a marked mutation in the early
nineteenth century. The concept of “Logos” signifies the type of rationality developed
in the philosophies of the modern era, culminating with Hegel’s. Furthermore, the
intention of the interrpretation by Adorno and Horkheimer is to show the connection
between metaphysics and politics, in that rational thought carries implicitly and at the
same time expresses the will to master [dominar] rationally all spheres of existence.
Thus Logos subjugates Eros; sexuality is not at liberty to give free rein to its
energies, which stand repressed. But the rupture brought on in the nineteenth
century by Nietzsche and his transmutation of values consists in denouncing the
“contradictions” of reason, so that both the force of Eros and the will to power are
freed from the tutelage of a reason which levels all things under the apparently
Apollonian light of the Logos. Reciprocally, the heightened value accorded to the
rational “no” and to sexual energy become a means to detect the contradictions of
modern rationality. This is not saying that the theme of the equality of men and
women arose in direct dependence of the critique of modern rationality; but this
critique did provide the difference between the sexes with a mental scheme it could
use to set out on a promising path. What in any case seems novel in this new
interpretation of the theories of Enlightenment, disseminated immediately after WWII,
is the triple and reciprocal linking of the critique of modern rationality with the
denunciation of the politically dominating power of reason, and with the demand of
sexual freedom as expression of the non-rational. 36
33
34
35
36
Geneviève FRAISSE, La différence des sexes, Paris, P.U.F., 1996, p. 84.
Max HORKHEIMER and Theodor W. ADORNO, Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische
Fragmente, Frankfurt, S. Fischer , 1969 (2nd ed.). (French transl.: La dialectique de la raison, Paris,
Gallimard, 1974.)
Michel FOUCAULT, Histoire de la sexualité. 1. La volonté de savoir. II. L´usage des plaisirs. III. Le
souci de soi, Paris, Gallimard, 1976, 1984, 1984. (Port. transl.: História da sexualidade, 3 vol.,
Lisbon, Relógio d´Água, 1994.) [JHN: English transl. by Robert Hurley: The History of Sexuality: 1
– The Will to Knowledge. 2– The Use of Pleasure. 3– The Care of the Self. Penguin Books, 1998.]
All interpretations are not in agreement, although the linking of political domination with the avatars
of the sexual drive has given rise to new readings of psychoanalysis from the standpoint of
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
23/39
Michel Foucault died before he could conclude his immense project of inquiry
into sexuality. The second and third books of his History of Sexuality constitute a
priceless analysis of sexuality in the Greco-Roman world, but the first volume, The
Will to Knowledge, already indicates the orientation of the global project. Without
going into the details of this thesis, we may let it speak for itself quoting the
concluding reflections of the first volume. “(…) We can understand the importance
assumed by sex as a political issue, for upon it hinge the two axes along which
developed the entire political technology of life. On the one hand it [sex] is tied to the
disciplines of the body: the honing, intensification and distribution of forces, the
adjustment and economy of energies. On the other hand, it relates to the regulation
of populations, through the global effects it brings about. It fits in both categories at
once, giving rise to infinitesimal surveillances, to controls for every moment, to
extremely meticulous orderings of space, to indefinite medical or psychological
examinations, to an entire micro-power ruling the body. But it gives rise as well to
mass measures, to statistical assessments, to interventions aimed at the entire social
body or at groups taken as a whole. Sex is a means of access both to the life of the
body and the life of the species. It is used as a matrix for disciplines and as a basis
for regulations. That is why in the nineteenth century sexuality was sought out in the
smallest details of individual existences; it was hounded in behavior, tracked down in
dreams; its presence was suspected behind the least follies, it was traced back into
the earliest years of childhood; it became a quantifier [cifra]of individuality –what
enabled us to analyse it and at the same time compile a census of it.” 37
Two observations illustrate and complete this excerpt. Between 1974 and
1976, Foucault introduces the concepts bio-history and bio-politics [or bio-power]. At
a time when “bioethics” had not yet attained the citizenship status it enjoys now,
Foucault was already stressing the importance of other aspects, contemplated today
only in part by bioethics and bio-Law. It is clearly from a bio-historical and bio-political
standpoint that Foucault analyses sexuality.
According to Foucault, the rupture brought on by the nineteenth century
consists in a substitution of sex for blood. What is meant by “blood” is the lineage that
maintains the identity of the wider family group; sexuality is then viewed through the
prism of the generations that belong to the same group (blue blood, bourgeois
families, etc.). The guiding concepts of this outlook are those of authority and law.
The political dimension of sexuality resides, according to Foucault, in this symbolic
mold that directly associates sexuality and power. That is why women are the
“beautiful sex,” being reduced to their breeding function. Now, the transition from
37
Marxism, and of Marxism from the standpoint of psychoanalysis. Herbert Marcuse contributed to
this line, whose success stamped the 50s and 60s, with several works, such as Eros and
Civilization. A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955). But Marcuse’s optimism seems rather naïf
today: the goods and services distributed by capitalism, by spreading inertia and egoism, would
prepare the way of the revolution; the revolution, in turn, would be able to free human beings
economically by satisfying their desire for well-being, at the same time permitting total and free
satisfaction of their sexual desires. In this way, the desire would not be defined in the first place by
the presence of a want seeking a satisfaction that is always arbitrary, but by the satisfaction of that
want, always possible so long as the obstacles in the path were removed. Marcuse’s Utopian vision
is in fact contested by more recent thinkers, such as Hans Jonas: on the one hand, the advances
of science have not ushered in an inevitable revolution; on the other hand, the liberation and
satisfaction of sexual desire do not bring about spontaneously the affective happiness of the
human being. That is why Marcuse’s Utopianism hardly seems convincing today.
Cf. FOUCAULT, op.cit. Vol.1 (Penguin 1998), pp. 145-146 [JHN: my translation, starting from the
Portuguese version given in the text, diverges in several points from Hurley’s.]
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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“sanguinity” to “sexuality” wrings changes in the symbolic order that underpins
thinking on sexuality; sexuality ceases to be absorbed by reproduction and invades
all psychic life, in fact the entire culture. Foucault lays stress on the conquest, during
the nineteenth century, of the separation of the medical theory of the body from the
theory of sexuality. Psychoanalysis is included in this conquest, but, according to
Foucault, psychoanalysis still refers back to a theory of law, of authority – in this
sense, it still shares to a large extent the old assumptions of the “symbolic order” of
blood.
It would be possible and interesting to extend Foucault’s reflections in inverse
direction: could not the exercise of politics be a form of expression of sexual
experience, too? It is not only Freud’s study of the case of President Wilson that
suggests this idea, but also the analysis of other collective phenomena. The
enthusiasm or even delirium that moves groups of demonstrators (say, those in May
68 in Paris, or April 74 in Lisbon) raises one question that merits close attention: to
what extent is political power an expression of sexuality? This question, however,
has more direct relevance to an analysis of political power than to one of sexuality,
so it is sufficient to stress its pertinence without attempting to answer it.
This brief synopsis of the relations between sexuality and politics allows us to
draw two conclusions. One thing is the style of concrete subordination of women that
a certain culture may foster unconsciously. In this case, the relation between
sexuality and politics merely reflects generalised cultural assumptions. The
application of these assumptions to the private lived experience of sexuality often
transforms this subordination into violent acts of machismo or domineering
submission. Quite another thing is the detection, by philosophers, psychologists or
sociologists of the molds or “symbolic schemes” that these assumptions interpret.
At this point it is in place, as we did before to round off the preceding analysis
of the institutional dimension of sexuality (2.5), to descend from the theoretical plane
to that of concrete praxis. When a young couple faces the necessity of putting off
marriage or their living together because they cannot afford to “set up” house and this
phenomenon is widespread in a given society; when the available housing is built to
accommodate no more than one or two children; when the privileged means of the
social prevention of AIDS is the distribution of condoms almost from the end of
primary school; then we verify that sexual union is no longer an issue concerning
only individuals, concerning rather the political organisation of that society. All
theories aside, concrete aspects subsist that compel the incorporation of political
analysis into an understanding of sexuality.
2.7. Pleasure, joy and happiness
Is it not somewhat strange to introduce only at this late point the theme of
sexual pleasure? Does not this delay reflect an analysis that ignores concrete
realities, confirmed by statistics, and takes refuge in philosophical aspects of lesser
relevance to everyday life? What justification is there for this delay?
An analysis that seeks to understand a phenomenon does not and must not
set out to reproduce the order of importance of factors as it may actually be
experienced. It suffices, in the end, that the analysis be able to show why it could not
start from what was most obvious.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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Sociological studies 38 indicate that seeking pleasure and the desire to have
children are two factors in sexual relations that evolve differently, according to age
brackets. The youngest set (15 to 45 years) clearly gives priority to pleasure (a
priority that diminishes with age), while the statistical equilibrium of the two factors is
found in the group aged 45-54.
Before it was considered per se in sexology, sexual pleasure was approached,
at least in the course of the second millennium of Western society, within the
theoretical confines of the purposes or goals of marriage. Whatever its denomination,
pleasure always came third, after procreation and communion of life. Like all
“interpretative schemes,” this theory generated, in terms of concrete consequences,
lives that achieved notable forms of equilibrium in the conduct of their sexual
experiences, as well as others that manifested equally patent imbalances. What
matters here is not to indicate a rigorous definition of this equilibrium or of its
contrary, but to bring to the fore the relation – quite stark in this last century of the
millennium – between the liberation and the repression of sexual pleasure.
We observe today, however, the demise of officially repressed sexuality, that
is to say, of a sexuality all hushed up or only talked about in private. Sexuality hit the
streets; even if it subsists as an often secret, hidden side of individual personality,
sexuality is analysed, debated and dissected in popular weeklies.39 The theme of
sexuality “sells”; likewise, direct or distant allusions to sexual pleasure are
commercially pushed to the limits of banality, both in advertising and in TV shows. Is
then sexual pleasure the “core” of sexuality?
If human beings were but objective animal bodies, pleasure would be indeed
the centre of sexuality, a centre serving mindlessly the survival of the species. But for
the human being as person, pleasure brings deep satisfaction only if it is more than
mere pleasure. In other words, pleasure must be open to another dimension, which,
without denying in the least the reality of sensory pleasure, contains a constitutive
opening out to something that exceeds pleasure and we may call “joy.”
The difference between sensory pleasure and joy resides in the ability that joy
confers to the person (qua sexed body) to open out to the other, to the other’s desire,
the other’s pleasure and joy. Joy expands the possibility of real encounter with the
other human being, while unshared sensory pleasure may reduce the tension of the
body but it does not slake the yearning for intersubjective sharing that sets human
beings apart from other animals. This is no moralising discourse, indicating what is
good or bad in individual behaviour; it is a matter of discerning what, in terms of an
understanding of the human being, fits into the dynamics of personality construction
and what leads away from such dynamics.
“Well,” one may object, “who decides which kinds of behaviour, sexual
behaviour in this case, fit or do not fit into the dynamics of personality construction?
Does not the autonomy of the person imply having the power to choose the dynamics
of one’s personal construction?” Apparently, according to this objection, the
underhand intention of a self-declared philosophical analysis is to impose a
determined behavioural mold on sexuality.
38
39
Cf. supra, no. 1.
On the cover of the May 1999 Portuguese edition of Cosmopolitan, advertised on large billboards,
the feature article was “Orgasm in the open air.”
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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The question is simple, the answer complex. We find ourselves, in effect, on
the borderline and intersection of anthropological-philosophical analysis and ethical
analysis. Well, when we devolve to the human being the dynamics of his or her selffulfilment, we operate an act of projection into the future, as if what each human
being will become were incorporated in the analysis of what he or she is now. But
since human freedom is necessary for the accomplishment of what “will become,” we
are no longer in the strict domain of anthropological analysis when we broach “the
dynamics of personality construction.” That is why we cannot impose on anybody the
fulfilment of his or her personality. Each human being chooses him or herself in a
unique way of being person. Even so, this choice does not mean it is impossible to
analyse the richness of contents inherent in being a person.
The psychological example of the amorous relationship may enlighten us in
this regard. On the one hand, it is true that each human being has “freedom of
choice” to live love as he or she wants it (even if freedom of choice is not equated
with the richest or most profound meaning of freedom); on the other hand, this
freedom of choice does not replace the “laws” psychology discovers in the
development of the amorous relationship and describes as the dynamics of its
evolution. This relationship has its laws – its laws for beginning, for facing up to the
obstacles time piles on, laws predicting a possible end to this amorous relationship
when it fails to overcome such obstacles.40 The spontaneity of the throbbing heart
involved in an amorous relationship does not escape the laws or the psychological
“regularities” that rule affective and sexual behaviour.
Mutatis mutandis, the philosophical analysis of the sexual relationship has
likewise the capacity to indicate the how pleasure, joy and happiness interrelate. It is
in this sense that there may be joyless sexual pleasure, as well as joy without
sensory pleasure. Merely to facilitate the onset of sexual pleasure – with or without
“techniques,” with or without new drugs – does not produce automatically a
supplement of joy in sexual relations; it may do so if other factors of an affective,
relational or ethical nature are also present. For human beings, endowed with
consciousness, sexual pleasure should not be disconnected from responsibility. If
responsibility implies in the first place a manner of “responding” to the other or with
regard to the other, sexual pleasure is genuinely human when it incorporates a
dimension of responsibility.
Happiness implies a more stable state of the soul; one that, for that very
reason, establishes a certain unity of lived experience in the midst of time’s
dispersion. Even when one instant fills existence to plenitude with its richness, we will
only speak of happiness if that one instant is able to project its shadow – or its light –
over a measure of the future. Likewise, looking back on the whole or part of the past
to evaluate it, we will speak of happiness not in relation to an act, however repeated,
but to a temporal unit.41 How this bears on sexual pleasure is then evident, even if
not always easily applied in the various stages of human existence: sexual pleasure
40
41
Cf. in this regard the brief but remarkable synthesis by LEMAIRE, J. G., “Amour. (Psychologie),” in
Encyclopaedia Universalis, vol. 1, Paris, 1968 (1st ed.).
“One swallow makes not Springtime,” as a Portuguese Fado lyric puts it. Or we may open
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, book 1 (1098 a 16), and read: “the good of man will be an activity
of the soul according to his virtue, and if there be many virtues, according to his most
accomplished. And let us add: in a life accomplished. For one swallow alone makes not springtime,
or even a single beautiful day, nor may a man be made happy and saintly by a single day or even a
short lapse of time.”
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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contributes to human happiness only through its incorporation into other affective and
ethical dimensions that are part and parcel of human existence. Inversely, the
realisation of “happiness” does not imply necessarily or indispensably the
intervention of sexual pleasure.
It would be philosophically wrong to repress sexual pleasure a priori in the
name of “joy” or genuine “happiness”; but neither may we reduce joy or happiness to
the exclusive dimension of physical pleasure.
2.8. Sexuality and eroticism
Many are the discourses on eroticism. On the one hand, eroticism evokes
everything that arouses sexual desire. In that sense, it is not limited to acts,
extending also to texts, works of art, representations and behaviour relating closely
or remotely to genital sexual activity. On the other hand, eroticism is considered, in
many books or articles, as that dimension of existence that encompasses the “art of
loving” latu sensu, physical or spiritual.
Any pretence at exhausting in but a few words the phenomenon of “eroticism”
would be aberrant, but it would be just as serious an omission to treat of sexuality
while overlooking the importance of this matter. There is no disagreement as to
etymology: the Greek Erôs designates “love, the god of Love, amorous desire,
sometimes desire in general terms.” 42 A lot of water flowed under the bridge
between the discourse on Eros in Plato’s The Symposium and the Freudian theory of
Eros. Likewise, comparing the understanding of Eros in the West with its
representation in the various Asian cultures, we shall find as many similarities as
divergences.
According to Plato, the nature of Eros is multiple, but in a more elevated and
positive sense, Eros is the elation [élan] of the soul that arrives at the plenitude of
knowledge; being an “élan that does not satisfy the multiple, erotic delirium, once it
reaches its term, generates discourse and knowledge through plenitude, not through
any lack. After Plato, no philosopher will attribute so much weight to the notion:
reduced to the phantoms connected with sexual desire, Erôs will be henceforward
but an obstacle to the ataraxy of the wise man.” 43 The sense of plenitude gives way
to want and expectation of desire, so as to allow Eros’s disturbing spell and twilight to
suffuse the sexual emotion. The confrontation with Christianity eventually forced a
definition of the frontiers separating “erotic” love from Christian love. If Agapê
characterises God’s love for His creature, what then is the difference between the
two loves, Erôs and Agapê? 44 Scholasticism built a set of themes round this idea,
which was actually in currency before the great syntheses of the nineteenth century.
Erôs love seeks the good of the beloved with its own good in mind, whereas Agapê
love seeks the good of the beloved exclusively with the beloved in mind. Only Agapê
love is truly altruistic. That is why charitas, translation of Agapê, is the paradigm of
Christian love, of that love which, without self-interest, is entirely turned to the good
of the beloved.
42
43
44
Pierre CHANTRAINE, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Histoire des mots, Paris,
Klincksieck, 1968 (reprinted 1990), vol.1, p. 363.
Cf. the entry “Eros et Erotisme,” in Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, Vol.2. Les notions
philosophiques, Paris, P. U. F., 1990, vol. 1, pp. 830-832.
Cf. the classic work by NYGREN, Eros et Agapê (Fr. transl.) Paris, Aubier, 2 vol., 1945 and 1952.
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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Today, in the wake of the analyses of the sexed body (2.1. above), the
prevailing understanding accords a more positive value to eroticism. To this effect
contributed literature, the fine arts and cinema.45 Admitting that the domain of the
“erotic” stands aside from the obscene and the pornographic, then eroticism appears
as a “charge” of affective attraction arising from body “language,” in a subtle game of
hide-and-seek, of offering and holding back.46 Ultimately, all human sexuality
includes eroticism to the extent that it is mediated by imagination. That is why
immediate genital sexuality and eroticism do not grow in parallel, as if the short-circuit
of immediate physical satisfaction eliminated the imaginative and erotic dimension of
the amorous game.47 The difficulty with eroticism at present resides in its utilisation
for commercial or advertising purposes. Will the eroticism that invades social and
public life be able to resist this onslaught that threatens to kill it, fighting it with the
creative powers of imagination? When everything is flaunted directly, it is hard to still
conjure up a little “mystery.” Maybe that is the noblest role of eroticism: to preserve
the “aura of mystery” that is part and parcel of sexuality.
2.9. Sexuality and tenderness
Sexuality that unfolds in duration, resisting the erosion of time as well as the
force of habit, generates reciprocal tenderness. Tenderness might be approached
globally as an affectionate bond that manifests, through active and inventive verbal
and gestural expression, a form of love respectful of the other. It is important to point
out at once that tenderness is not confined to the realm of genital sexuality, even
though there is no need, in the framework of a synthetic analysis of sexuality, to
discriminate the several forms of tenderness. Just as there are diverse forms of love
– conjugal love, parental love, filial love, friendship love, love marked by Eros, Agapê
love – the forms of tenderness are also diversified in conformity with the
expressiveness and the respect specific to each form of love. Moreover, the
manifestations of tenderness evolve with time: it would be rather odd if a couple’s
expressions of tenderness after 30 or 40 years of life together were identical to those
between two human beings whose love or courtship is six months old.
Unrestricted to the sphere of sexuality, tenderness, which hails from another
dimension of the affects, also intersects with the sexual manifestation of love. As the
years wear on, it is normal that the physical force of sexuality should diminish,
although it is pertinent to observe that the affectionate expression of love is able to
invent ever richer and more profound forms of tenderness. 48
2.10. Sexuality and failure
No sphere of existence is exempt from failure. It lies beyond the scope of the
present analysis, however, to define precisely what is meant by failure in the domain
45
46
47
48
Cf. BATAILLE, L´érotisme; ALBERONI, Il erotismo.
The evolution of “high fashion” illustrates at present this kind of game, which consists in wanting to
draw attention to what it purports to screen off.
It is possible that the “courting” of young people often misses out on one of the dimensions of
sexuality, becoming banalised into non-erotic love, either through lack of imagination or through too
quick a discovery of physical pleasure.
Cf. Eric FUCHS, Le désir et la tendresse, Geneva, Labor et Fides, 1979 (a historical analysis from
the point of view of Protestant theology).
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
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of sexuality. Failure, not necessarily definitive, may be felt subjectively due to an
individual inability to administer sexual desire or to integrate in balanced manner the
components of genital sexuality. It may also be perceived subjectively as rupture of
an affectionate or sexual relationship that had begun with the intention – or presumed
intention – of achieving a gratifying stability. Finally, it may be diagnosed objectively
or from the outside when we see a striking inability to integrate one or several of the
dimensions of sexuality analysed above. 49
Before we analyse the assumption or imputation of responsibilities, we must
point out that not only our affective or professional life but also our “psycho-sexual
life” – an expression that is not meant to indicate the isolation or watertight character
of this “life” in human existence – proceed through stages of education, evolution and
maturation. “Desire undergoes, like man himself, an infancy and an adult age; it may
get lost or stuck at some point on the road to maturity; at the same time, it desires
and does not desire what might fulfil it. This is the case with the desire to love and be
loved, the most decisive of all. Yet our first and immediate way of loving consists in
incorporating the other into ourselves, so as to make him or her alike to us. Thereby
the other forfeits autonomy; thereby love loses its partner. But this failure will be a
passing one, because it incites us to seek another way of loving.” 50
Sexuality is the domain where the voluntary and the involuntary intersect in
complex ways. That is why it is best to avoid an immediate, facile moralisation of that
which, being so intimately tied to individual history, cannot be understood without
long and benevolent listening.
Besides, what appears outwardly as failure may originate in conscious and
responsible personal factors, or conscious but compulsive factors; just as it may
originate in external or objective events that altered the capacity for action or
reaction. It may originate in multiple affective disturbances, or finally in simple
psychological incompatibility in that relationship.
Nonetheless, we must not conceal the existence of genuine perversions in the
domain of sexuality. It is no mystery to anyone that there is a high number of
individuals struck by psychological disturbances of all kinds in the domain of
sexuality. The matter must then be referred to psychiatry even before it is presented
to moral reflection. In such cases, ethical help will be a complement, no more.
As a final note and going beyond the scope of psychiatry, we must draw
attention to a frequent cause of failure in sexual experience in contemporary society.
When genital sexuality, affectivity and the institutional dimension in an amorous
relationship do not achieve proper harmony – i.e. when any of these dimensions is
lived to the exclusion of the others – the seed of fragmentation and failure is already
present in the relationship. And since a relationship is a shared experience, any
failure in one of the two parties to the relationship will, unfortunately, affect the other
one, too.
2.11. Sexuality and sublimation
49
50
With the possible exception of the institutional or political aspects (cf. supra, 2.5 and 2.6).
Pierre DELOOZ and Pierre-Philippe DRUET, Le présent de l´amour, Brussels, F. F. E., 1985, p.
117.
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Today, sublimation is a concept that immediately evokes psychoanalysis.51 It
matters little to mention that sublimation, according to the Freud of 1915, is one of
the four outlets of the sex drive. It matters little to mention that the sublimation of the
drive through artistic creation is, according to Freud, a simple means to avoid
neurosis, that sublimation through religion does no more than constitute a collective
neurosis that offers dispensation from individual neurosis.
In a wider sense, sublimation designates the channelling of sexual energies to
the performance of other activities, of a cultural, artistic or professional nature. Its
unconscious cause might lie (according to Freud, it does lie) in an attempt to avoid
displeasure or suffering at the level of our drives (for the “reality principle” places an
insurmountable barrier to the “pleasure principle”).
It is permissible, however, to transpose the Freudian meaning of sublimation
to endow it with wider reaching contents. Sublimation acquires then a twofold
function. On the one hand, it shows that all the energies that human beings bring to
their experience of affectivity or love, to the pursuit of their goals and the fulfilment of
their desires, have their roots in an opaque, non-transparent substrate of driving
energy – viewed through the prism of driving energy, every human activity, be it trivial
or eminently spiritual, springs from a substrate of drives or libido.52 On the other
hand, in the concrete forms which conscious activity invests (e.g. in professional
matters, in manifestations of tenderness, in scientific or cultural creativity), there is a
“surplus of meaning” over the drive energy. This surplus of meaning escapes
psychoanalytic analysis and requires, depending on the case, a specifically aesthetic
or cultural or religious or scientific or ethical approach.
The consequence to the understanding of sexuality is that sexual energy does
not depend necessarily and indispensably on direct sexual “activity” to feed the
spiritual fulfilment of the human being. Many human existences have been dedicated,
without genital sexual activity, to “causes” scientific, artistic, political, religious,
professional, or simply stamped by the ethical value of altruism, and they were
carried with equilibrium, accomplishment and possibly complete fulfilment. It was
necessary, at the conclusion – and only at the conclusion – of an analysis of
sexuality, to show that sublimation is present in every existence, that it plays an
essential function in personality construction, and that it may actually reach heights
that bear witness to the richness of meaning human beings are able to impart to their
existence.
2.12. Conclusion of the anthropological-philosophical analysis
Human sexuality contains multiple facets, and the preceding analysis risked
presenting them in fragmentary manner. Hence, it is appropriate to collate them now
into a coherent, articulated whole.
The most evident end purposes of sexuality, as they spontaneously present
themselves to thought and are consensually described, are “love” (or the amorous
51
52
One of the best recent works on the subject is surely Antoine VERGOTE’s La psychanalyse à
l´épreuve de la sublimation, Paris, Cerf, 1997 (cf. pp. 231-237 and the conclusion, pp.265-276).
Medical observations carried out in concentration camps suggest that the sex drive constitutes a
luxury activity, as it were. Perhaps we may propose the following interpretation: when a person
must fight for its physical survival, all its energies are mobilised, as if the derivation or sublimation
of the sex drive took place at organic level, into the struggle to fend off death.
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relationship), procreation (“having children”), and pleasure. Yet, one must understand
that sexuality touches every dimension of the person (cf. 2.1, “the sexed body”), that
it is not confined to active genital sexuality. As it happens, those dimensions are also
lived through time (cf. 2.2, “sexuality, desire and time”) – this requires a certain unity
of behaviour and imparts coherence to existence, for human beings are incapable of
reducing themselves to a purely animal way of life. Contrary to that animal way of life,
the “prohibition of incest” (cf. 2.3) has always been considered as a threshold beyond
which “nature” in man accedes to “culture.” Human beings imprint on their sexual
mores the mark of this accession, negatively by the prohibition of incest, and
positively by standing open to forms of alliance turned to the social exteriority of the
human group. Yet even these tenets represent no more than prerequisite conditions
for the emergence of sexuality in its truly human sense, that is, the “relationship of
affective reciprocity” (cf. 2.4), bearing all the rich nuances of love. Here we reach
solid, safe ground, as if finally we had access to the primordial meaning of sexuality.
But does this love concern only the two beings that love each other? Both the coming
into existence of the child born of the act of love and the recognition of social
institution status sealed by marriage (cf. 2.5, “the roles of the third person and of the
institution”) prove that love is not a closed, exclusively dual relationship. Social
problems, however, entail political decisions; moreover, cultural history and the
diachronic understanding of sexuality prove that the relation between “sexuality and
politics” (cf. 2.6) is inescapable – indeed, our imaginary cultural molds have led us to
think about sexuality in terms of power and domination. But those theses are of little
interest to anyone but specialists in human sciences. The concrete reality we
experience each day with some enchantment and just as much perplexity is the
phenomenon of “eroticism” (cf. 2.7), which combines attraction, imagination and
mystery. Is it not more appropriate to prefer to the upheavals of erotic desire the
serenity of “tenderness” (cf. 2.8)? Young people might presume that “sex” with
tenderness is the only sexual remedy or alibi of their elders! Yet they are wrong, as
we may learn from a deeper understanding of tenderness. But who has access to
this understanding: philosophers or every human being? Can it be that the analyst
ignores the concrete reality of people’s lives to the point of imagining that in sexuality
everything must spontaneously “run smoothly”? To this apparent ingenuity one must
oppose the harsh reality of “failure” (2.10), at times more widespread than
equilibrium. If, however, failure is neither universal nor definitive, then we must look
farther for a reason, to the ability all human beings possess to draw on the energy of
their deepest drives and “sublimate” them (cf. 2.11). Going beyond Freud, we may
ponder that the capacity for sublimation is not reserved only to artists who found
expression through the works they created; every human being, as a spiritual being,
has within reach this possibility – regardless of active genital sexuality – of
sublimating the energies of the libido through an act that expresses and creates his
or her own person.
Still, a philosophical analysis of sexuality may not round off with the complex
problems of sublimation, for the latter goes beyond the dimension of sexuality – even
though sexuality constantly makes demands upon it. The conclusion concludes,
therefore, by returning to the simplest evidence, already shown to be supported by
sociological data, an evidence now enriched with a reflexive density it lacked before:
the “sex with love” of sociology is justified if it is understood as sexual lived
experience within a durable intersubjective relationship and as part of a communion
(com- unio) of life; “sex to have children” is justified by the taking on of personal and
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social responsibility for new human beings, within a durable intersubjective
relationship; “sex as pleasure” is justified by responsible pleasure, a source of joy not
exempt from ascesis and sublimation, which springs from human sexuality lived in its
multiple dimensions.
3. Elements for an ethical analysis of sexuality
To present an ethics of sexuality, besides being by nature a delicate task,
requires taking into consideration who is being addressed and their values. The lived
experience of sexuality always implies in effect, implicitly or explicitly, taking a stand
on certain ethical values. Now, ethical values are not imposed from the outside; this
entails that an ethics of sexuality is binding only when a person has chosen to accept
it. The ethics of sexuality, therefore, is not the same as a juridical code of the rights
or duties of human individuals concerning sexuality.
We must distinguish between the ethical point of view of the individual as
regards the lived experience of his or her own sexuality (the self-evaluation each one
makes); the relational point of view, that is, the intersubjective, private and intimate
dimension of acts or attitudes that imply the presence of another person (interaction
in the sexual relationship); and lastly the social or public stands taken on matters
relating to sexuality. Values are viewed differently from each of these angles of
analysis.
Moreover, an ethical theory of sexuality must maintain a sufficiently high level
of generality to avoid confusing broad principles that offer firm, clear guidance in life
with piecemeal “practical wisdom” serving to resolve problems or difficulties arising
from concrete cases.
The enunciation of these principles will follow the order of exposition used in
the “anthropological analysis” of sexuality (no.2 supra).
3.1. Since sexuality touches the entire human person, as shown by the
analysis of the “sexed body,” the ethics of sexuality implies that the “good” of human
beings, in what concerns their sexual behaviour, rests on the freely assumed
intertwining of the life of the body, affectivity and the mind. In other words, sexuality
cut off from a relation of affection is not, in the medium or long term, constructive of
the human personality. The corollary of this principle is fairly important, too: finitude,
which marks affective life and implies our inability to maintain affectionate ties with an
indefinite multiplicity of people, extends to sexual behaviour, too, so that “Don
Juanism” (independently of its psychoanalytic connotations) does not fit in with the
ethical good of the person in sexual life.
3.2. The construction of personality is produced in time. Concerning sexuality,
too, this temporal condition of the human being implies a dynamic process and a
gradual evolution. This dynamic process is impossible without some coherence with
ourselves in the way we administer desire and sexual force. Coherence in the
conduction of our sexual lives may be interpreted in terms of being faithful to
ourselves, and it constitutes an ethical principle bearing on the development of the
human personality over time.
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3.3. On pain of serious psychological disturbances, the identity of human
beings requires that their position within the family be clear and unambiguous to
themselves. Incest radically opposes the balanced construction of the human
personality, not only for reasons of a psychological nature but also because the
principle of alliance, which presides over human sexuality, demands that the family
should open outwardly and not stay closed upon itself. The ethical principle of
alliance does not tolerate incest.
3.4. Sexual love, as union with another person, is a communion of life
respecting the other’s alterity. The ethical construction of personality on the plane of
our sex life will be produced through a joint promotion of love and respect for the
other person, with neither becoming a mere object of pleasure, that is to say, with
neither becoming an instrument in the hands of anyone at all. Serious, profound love
tends toward exclusivity and durability, foreseeing, at the start, no termination. The
ethical construction of personality aims, in the sphere of sexual life, at the fulfilment
of a serious, lasting love.
3.5. A lasting sexual relationship carries, whether one wishes it or not, a socioinstitutional dimension (borne out by the fact that “de facto unions” seek social
recognition). On the other hand, the natural procreation of human beings
presupposes – save for cases where procreation is medically assisted – sexual
congress. The ethical principle of sex life as regards procreation demands respect for
the child’s right to care by its father and mother in a stable family environment.
3.6. Ethics and politics connect on the plane of sexual activity. Sexual
behaviour always implies cultural assumptions; the ethical construction of personality
incorporates respect for equity into the sexual relationship. Reciprocally, the forms of
machismo or inequality that fail to observe this equity are not reconcilable with the
ethics of sexuality. On the other hand, it is a duty of policy-making entities to take the
necessary measures to create conditions for the ethical construction of personality on
the plane of our sex life.
3.7. Pleasure, joy and happiness are not identical concepts, for they do not
denote the same reality. In the realm of our sex life, the ethical construction of
personality tends toward an ever closer connection between pleasure and joy,
bearing in mind that joy always implies the possibility or reality of shared experience
with another human being respected as such (cf. supra, no.4). The more it is shared
on a basis that is not exclusively corporeal, the more will this joy fulfil the human
being. The more profound and stable the joy, the greater will be the likelihood of its
generating genuine happiness.
3.8. Are ethics and eroticism reconcilable? Looking under all its various
deviations, we must bring into the light of day the constructive value of eroticism. The
dynamic force that inhabits eroticism is a mixture of attraction, imagination and
mystery. The alteration of any of these factors is able to deprive eroticism of its
constructive dimension in the “healthy” experience of sexuality. A sexual relationship
devoid of attraction becomes mechanical; devoid of imagination, it becomes
objectifying, easily transforming the other into an object; without an “aura” of mystery,
it easily becomes devoid of respect and enchantment. Moreover, being linked with
desire, eroticism is a likely location for great deviations or perversions; in this regard,
there is some cause for concern in the encroachment of pornography on the Internet.
What will be the contents of the imagination, the imaginative power and the ability to
relate of a human being who is, in matters of sexuality, obsessed by pornography on
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screen? Among other aspects, pornography carries a germ that kills the expression
of tenderness.
3.9. Is there an ethics of tenderness? In metaphorical terms, one might say
that tenderness is the poetry of love. The creativity inherent to tenderness is a way
that harmonises and reconciles the human expression of love with the realm of life
and the world of the cosmos. That is why tenderness is able to gather into one,
according to Erich Fuchs commenting a poet, the triple song rising from the world,
the word and the flesh. An ethics of tenderness contributes to the individualisation
and personalisation of the sexual encounter, constituting thus a specifically human
value. Let it be said, furthermore, that tenderness is open to a variety and multiplicity
of expressions, so that its range of manifestation is not limited to the sphere of
sexuality: there are forms of tenderness specific to each kind of affective relationship
(parental or filial love, friendship, etc.).
3.10. Not being exempt from failures, the human journey in sexuality proceeds
in different manner and at different pace for each individual. An ethics of sexuality
implies that, in case it happens, failure be admitted and integrated not as something
that annihilates the person but as the starting point for ever-possible advances in the
construction of personality.
3.11. In the construction of personality there is no advance without some
frustration. Education entails confrontation with frustration, with benefit to a greater
unification of the person. Likewise, there is no advance without ascesis. This truth,
valid for any personal dynamic process or search of self-fulfilment at physical,
professional or spiritual level, also rules the education of personality in matters of
sexuality. The inevitable frustration becomes ethical when it is seen not as having
value in itself but as a stepping-stone to a good deemed to be higher in the broader
picture of the construction of personality.
3.12. The ethics of sexuality is not addressed only to people who live a
relationship of sex and affection. For multiple reasons of a voluntary or involuntary
nature, there are people who live in a situation of sexual abstinence or continence.
Such is the case of people, young or not, who have not had the luck – or who have
not yet had the possibility – of finding the person with whom they might or would
have wished to share their life. Such is case of handicapped human beings. Another
situation, even more frequent, is that of widowed or divorced people. Similarly, there
are human beings who freely chose celibacy in the name of a religious ideal or
ordainment, or out of dedication to some scientific or altruistic cause that
monopolised all their forces. It is not excluded, either, that a situation of solitude due
to involuntary reasons may later be assumed voluntarily and serenely. Now, the
ethics of sexuality – as mentioned in point 2.11 above – concerns human beings in
such situations just as much. Every person expresses itself through its sexed body,
every person is sensitive to eroticism, every person is called upon to receive and give
signs of tenderness appropriate to its particular situation, every person constructs its
own search for happiness through passing time – through high and low moments,
through success and possible failures –, every person deserves respect and is called
upon to respect the freedom of others. Thus, an ethics of the construction of
personality through the lived experience of sexuality also lays stress on this: that,
despite the specific difficulties of such a path, there are multiple ways to live a
harmonious, serene sexuality outside the sphere of sexual relationships.
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4. Elements for an education into sexuality
An education into sexuality is as necessary as it is difficult. At the start, we
must distinguish self-education from the task of educating others, usually younger
than ourselves. The tutors are expected to have been duly educated as well, and
able to find the right tone for speaking of sexuality. Considering that sexuality is
dynamic and coextensive with the full span of human existence, our self-education
into sexuality may never be deemed complete; indeed, our passage through the
different ages of life shows us that this self-education presents different contours and
new demands as it progresses. Broadly speaking, what we mean by “education into
sexuality” is the task of educating others; a task reserved in the first place to the
family and the school, then to social, religious or political institutions turned to matters
of physical and mental health, to intersubjective relationships and to family planning.
An education into sexuality might be thought complete only when it was at the
start erroneously reduced to imparting objective knowledge relating to human
reproduction. The first conviction in the tutor’s mind, therefore, must be that the
education into sexuality is an ongoing process that no amount of school lessons can
encompass. Just as not all aspects of women’s or men’s lives can be taught at
school, an education into sexuality will not be definitively assured there either,
regardless of the quality of the teaching.
On the other hand, the education into sexuality will find even less than other
educational tasks its perfect or exemplary educator, and this often makes it harder to
adopt a clear, serene and firm language. Thus, imperfect tutors must take on the
charge of this education into sexuality – a field that also makes it hard to separate the
theory being taught from the tutor’s own experiences. Moreover, being usually older
than the pupils, the tutors are likely to have had a longer experience of sexuality,
which might bring into play, besides gratifying, happy experiences, the presence of
thwarted hopes, of pains or wounds not yet healed, of possible failures or even
unconfessed perversions.
Probably moved by the intention to maintain ideological neutrality, the social
and political entities charged with setting the syllabus of the “education into sexuality”
resist with difficulty the temptation of facileness – which consists here in restricting
the syllabus as much as possible to teaching the anatomy and physiology of
reproduction and describing contraceptive methods, adding a minimum of
psychological considerations supposedly free of any ideological elements that might
limit or channel the freedom of the pupil. Laying down this syllabus in legislation is no
guarantee of its quality, or of respect for the pupils as persons. In effect, it is a
serious mistake to suppose that respect for the freedom of the pupils demands that
their education into sexuality be restricted to the objective and biological aspects of
sexual relations.
As we did in the ethical analysis of sexuality (point 3 above), the final
considerations will follow the order used in the anthropological analysis (point 2
above) and in the ethical analysis (point 3 above), so as to establish general
guidelines for the syllabus of education into sexuality. The chief goals of these
guidelines are to promote dignity in our sex life, countering its banalisation; to appeal
for accountability in sexual behaviour, countering irresponsibility in that area; to insist
on the obligation to respect the other person, countering all attempts at utilisation or
intrumentalisation. Considerations on family planning and contraception will be
incorporated into this wider context.
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4.1. The first guideline for education into sexuality asks for the non-separation
of the three dimensions of sexuality, namely the anatomical-physiological, the
affective-relational, and the social dimensions. The philosophical theme of the “sexed
body” 53 means that sexuality is not added on to a person already constituted as
person independently of its sexed condition; sexuality is there throughout the
person’s existence, psychologically and socially. For that very reason, education into
sexuality may not abstract the multiple dimensions connected with the sexed human
existence, for the body’s physiology, despite its great basic importance, is but one of
the planes on which the person’s existence unfolds.
4.2. It is not only the education into sexuality that takes its time, but also the
evolution of psychological equilibrium in the experience of sexuality. It is fitting to
insist on the evolution of sexuality with age. In this sexual and affective evolution,
every human being goes through multiple stages, which psychology describes. One
consequence is particularly important: any imbalance or apparently insurmountable
difficulty at a given moment does not mean that imbalance is definitive. Contrariwise,
the equilibrium attained at a given age is not guaranteed to be permanent in the
future. The equilibrium among the several dimensions of sexuality and affectivity is
always fragile, but dynamic, and it is never acquired once and for all; it demands from
both man and woman an open frame of mind, always attentive and active. Moreover,
the education into sexuality illustrates the need to incorporate time into the way we
administer desire and affectivity. Bonds of affection are not created in a snap, they
require some time to become closer and deeper, and skipping this stage, the sexual
encounter loses its human richness.
4.3. Education into sexuality guides human beings on their way to achieving a
human identity, male or female. One of the greatest dangers that beset this
accomplishment is psychological and affective fusion, which makes the human being,
young or adult, dependent on some possessive person (e.g. mother or father,
daughter or son) or then impedes confrontation with the alterity of others. Ethically
and psychologically deadly, fusion is a risk that must be avoided. The forms of fusion
are multiple, particularly in incest. Part of the educational guidance of sexuality
consists in stressing the incompatibility between the acquisition of an adult
personality and fusional forms of relationship. Relationship must replace fusion.
4.4. To live a lasting human love implies great respect for the other’s alterity. It
is essential, no doubt, to introduce the differences between the female and male
modes of experiencing life, this being the purpose of differential anthropology.
Hence, the chief elements of differential anthropology must be included in the
educational guidance of sexuality. Yet, given that the other is not a woman-in-general
or a man-in-general but actually that woman or that man, the acceptance of her or his
person as other is beyond the requirements of differential anthropology. In effect,
there is a difference between a theoretical acceptance that the other human being
with whom we initiate or prolong a relation of affection is different, and accepting in
practice that, by virtue of this difference, he or she may not be molded by “me,”
according to how “I” project and imagine this difference. Recognising the other’s full
and free alterity implies an inversion in the terms of the relation spontaneously
constructed between his or her person and the image that “I” made of this person: it
is not the other’s reality that must conform to the image, it is the image that must
53
The expression “sexed body” is to be understood in the sense indicated in note 9 supra, i.e. as
“sexed human life” or as “human person in its sexed dimension.”
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conform to reality. As it happens, adolescent love, due to the psychological
narcissism that affects it, rises slowly and with difficulty to this acceptance; for that
very reason, precocious courtship usually leads fairly quickly to a dead-end. A
fundamental point in guidance consists in trying to bring home the understanding and
acceptance of the irreducible alterity of the other as a unique person.
4.5. Ethics has shown that the ideal towards which we ought to tend, from the
point of view of human procreation, is the bringing forth of children in the setting of a
stable family nucleus founded on love. On the other hand, making room for the
children modifies the relational equilibrium of the family cell. Given the concrete
dynamics of the relationship of sex and affection, it is therefore desirable that
motherhood and fatherhood be responsible. The education into sexuality derives
therefrom a new guideline: responsible parenthood demands a joint previous
reflection on family planning and on the best measures to be taken for the purpose.
4.6. The connections between sexuality and politics may be approached from
multiple angles. The educational blueprint resulting from these connections
addresses in the first place the equality of rights and duties, the fight against forms of
exploiting women and children. It is often said that the twenty-first century will be the
century of women, in the course of which women will gradually acquire effective
equality with men. The guidelines for education into sexuality will reserve a place for
the denunciation of forms of physical and psychological violence against women and
children, for the denunciation of prostitution and paedophilia, and also a place for
means to fight the evils incurred by society on those accounts. Stated in a more
positive manner, the promotion of women cannot but promote men, for their affective
and sexual encounter is accomplished on a basis of equality, not on the basis of
some form of subordination. Moreover, responsible procreation must be regarded by
society as a valuable service rendered to it, so that policies according privileges to
the family cease to be considered as concessions to families by the State, being
instead, at least in Western countries, a right, in which the State itself has a vested
interest.
4.7. Ethical analysis has shown the need to distinguish physical pleasure, joy
and happiness, and to illustrate their reciprocal articulation. In matters of sexuality,
the usual result of the near-exclusive insistence on pleasure and on the apparent
“normality” of sexual encounters unconnected with a stable project is the actual
reduction of the education into sexuality to a physiological description of sexual
congress and of the use of condoms. From that point of view, when the legislation
that regulates sexual education confines itself to the physical aspects of sexuality,
paying no attention to the balanced development of all its dimensions – and when it
resorts almost exclusively to condom campaigns to solve sexual problems – it
manifests a seriously reductive understanding of sexuality. Under the pretext of a
praiseworthy struggle against the risk of AIDS, the education into sexuality as
provided for in some legislative acts ends up producing negative effects, contrary to
their proclaimed educational goals. The guideline we may extract from this
problematic issue is methodological rule: always try to resolve particular problems
starting from a global perspective that integrates all human dimensions of sexuality.
For all its power, sexual pleasure alone cannot aspire to taking the place of this
global perspective.
4.8. Attraction, imagination and mystery intersect in eroticism. Through its
connection with the force of desire, eroticism outlines a domain in which the wonders
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revealed by sexuality may also degenerate into perversions. Lying between two
extremes, one being the banalisation of eroticism by pornography, the other being
attitudes of escape caused by deep fears or unconscious complexes, eroticism
appears to offer the opportunity of serving as a link connecting the presence of
bodies with the emergence of affection or love. In keeping with the preceding
methodological rule, we see here an educational guideline asking that eroticism be
not isolated from the whole of the human dimensions of sexuality.
4.9. The importance of tenderness is understood gradually as the human
being, man or woman, advances in years. We are unlikely to err when we affirm that
a sexual relationship that does not generate ever-deeper forms of tenderness over
the years is bound to founder. Here, the educational guideline emerges forcefully:
tenderness is part and parcel of all forms of love and must not be overlooked in an
analysis of sexuality. On the other hand, tenderness finds or invents expressions
which, though rooted in the sexed body (or in the sexed dimension of the person),
need not rest on actual sexual relations to weave profound ties of affection.
4.10. The path of each human being is unique and, in most cases, paved with
learning through trial and error. To represent the sexual fulfilment of a human life as
an easy, spontaneous progress, besides being erroneous, shows great naïveté. The
expression Aristotle reserved for ethical living is equally fitting here: it is a “rough
task.” Even when we must assume the consequences of failures suffered in the
course of discovering or living out sexuality, such failures never shut the door
definitively to genuine human fulfilment. The educational proposal in this regard
consists in having the courage to acknowledge failures, to assume them and still
believe that the path of life is always open to those who endeavour to discover it or
invent it. To be sure, it will not be necessarily on the same plane of sexual or
affective life that new doors will open. In other words, the path to fulfilment in human
life offers possibilities not necessarily connected with an active sex life.
4.11. The easiest solutions to problems relating to our sex life are not
necessarily the best or the most appropriate. Advancement demands, in almost
every sphere of human existence, a measure of effort and renunciation; the
education into sexuality is no exception. The acceptance of frustrations, in any of the
several planes making up human sexuality, must be mentioned in the guidelines that
preside over the education into sexuality. The chief task of education, in dealing with
the imposition or self-imposition of frustrations, resides in the orientation of attention.
When attention is fixed on the goal or good attainable through frustration, the latter is
more easily bearable, and its acceptance is seen to mediate the accomplishment of
an existential project that is, strictly speaking, “worth the trouble.” To propose, in the
domain of sexuality, a life orientation that is “worth the trouble”– here is perhaps the
first and last guideline of our educational task, both when we teach others and in
those cases in which teacher and pupil are… one and the same person.
4.12. This “worth the trouble” guideline applies to everyone – to people who
live a relationship of sex and affection, as well as to people who for some reason (cf.
point 3.12 above) are led to expressions not directly sexual in their relations of
affection.
Conclusion
José Henrique Neto
PROF. MICHEL RENAUD – HUMAN SEXUALITY
39/39
The present reflection attempted to clarify philosophically the dimensions or
aspects pertaining to human sexuality, to propose broad ethical principles and to
establish guidelines for an education into sexuality. Ultimately, sexuality is intimately
tied to the lived experience of the person. Taking up again words already commented
in the introduction, we may say in conclusion that human sexuality appears as a
mixture and mystery of meaning and force, inviting discovery through multiple
approaches – like a wonderland in which the other human being appears in all its
dignity and fragility, requesting respect; or perhaps like a wilderness for errant
searching, where nevertheless an open door always awaits leading to the recovery of
personal dignity.
The Relator,
Prof. Michel Renaud